Marine slide collection scanning and indexing

To scan and index a collection of 35mm slides (22,000 initially, with up to 50 000 in total in potential follow on work) for reconciliation with metadata and input into JNCC's digital image catalogue system, with further aims to allow JNCC staff and public to search for and download images of interest.

Project Background Over a 20 year period, JNCC (and preceding companies) undertook marine survey work all around the UK.

Part of the data collection included photography, and these images were developed as 35mm slides.

Over the 20 years, 50,000 images were taken, catalogued and stored as a reference collection.

This collection is becoming increasing valuable as reference material and as a baseline for monitoring.

Now we have moved into a digital world, we need to ensure these images are mobilised and made openly available.

In order to: • Secure storage going forward as acetate film will deteriorate over time; • Ensure we can make the images widely available to the public as part of our open data policy; • JNCC is taking the first steps in reducing costs and becoming a paperless office, therefore there is a desire to move away from physically stored material.

The slides are of varying quality with a varying level of metadata and lineage.

An initial filter of the slides has identified roughly 22,000 slides with full provenance and metadata.

There exist another ~20,000 slides, which are not as well catalogued that JNCC will endeavour to curate, and there is therefore the potential for follow-on work for the successful contractor to cover this subsequent tranche of slides.