6 October 2005
With the help of a grant from the Big Lottery, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) has scanning well underway to make a core collection of some 30,000 Second World War images available on-line. Supporting this activity, the Museum's newly installed high resolution Colenta Creator Digilab from Capix will meet the demand for hard copy prints.
"For several decades we have provided handmade silver gelatin prints to our many customers who range from private researchers to major publishers," says Jeremy Richards, manager of the Photo Unit at the IWM. "The Photograph Archive provides public access to a growing collection of almost 10 million images which reflect the Imperial War Museum's brief to cover all aspects of British and Commonwealth conflict since the First World War.
"We are now moving from the analogue to the digital world with the Colenta system. It is the first time we have invested in a machine with such diverse imaging facilities, including the ability to print up to 14x18ins which covers a substantial part of our existing business."
In addition to this service, the Big Lottery grant, awarded to mark the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, is enabling the Museum to put an important part of its Second World War collections on-line. The Photo Unit is scanning selected areas of the collection to provide an on-line website which visitors can easily access and browse to make their print selection:
"We recognised that following our investment in the creation of a substantial digital resource of over 30,000 images, we would need to be able to output the images quickly and efficiently," says Richards. "The Colenta Creator Digilab enables us to do this through the use of network hot folders."
Installed for just over a month, the Colenta system is not yet running at optimum capacity, but with over 30,000 images soon to be available, full-on mode cannot be far away.
For full details of the latest Colenta Creator systems now available from Capix, contact Brian Peters - telephone: 01480 472 233, email: brian@capix.co.uk
