The Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) maintains a large digital archive of over 250,000 items totaling 24 terabytes of data, with around 15,000 new items digitized annually. The archive contains a variety of material on the built environment including photographs, drawings, and 3D laser scans of historic sites and structures. RCAHMS faces challenges in cataloging and preserving this growing specialist collection stored in non-standard formats.

1. Digital Archiving
DEDICATE Final Seminar
21 October 2013
Emily Nimmo
The Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of
Scotland (RCAHMS)

2. Structure
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Introduction to RCAHMS
Introduction to RCAHMS’ Di i l A hi
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d i
Digital Archive
Collections Profile
Curating Built Environment Data –
Current Projects

3. www.rcahms.gov.uk
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http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/

4. RCAHMS Digital Collections
© CFA Archaeology Ltd
© Professor James Hunter

5. RCAHMS Digital Collections
•Over 250,000 digital items
•24TB of data
24TB f d t
•30,000 digital items
30,000
deposited last year
•Around 15 000 di iti d
A
d 15,000 digitised
objects a year
© RMJM

6. Growth of data

7. Types of material in our archive
yp
Profile of catalogued
g
data in the Digital
Archive

8. Challenges relating t collection
Ch ll
l ti to ll ti
profile

9. Parsimonious Preservation
Outcomes for small
organisations with
specialist collections in
non standard formats
© Flickr user quimby

10. Documenting 3D Laser Sca
ocu e t g 3 ase Scanning
g
© RCAHMS

11. 3 ase Scanning
3D Laser Sca
g
© RCAHMS

12. © RCAHMS

13. © RCAHMS

14. © RCAHMS

15. Thank you
y
emily.nimmo@rcahms.gov.uk
il i
@ h
k