• Digital Collections at Henley and Grange Historical Society

    April 19, 2023

John Hannay from the Henley and Grange Historical Society shares here what he and other volunteers have been working on. After participating in the 2022 Digitising Collections SA training online the Henley and Grange Historical Society have borrowed the loan equipment purchased as part of the DPC funded pilot project. John shares some of the results below. 

Two men in a storage space with shelves full of archive
The Henley and Grange Historical Society collections storage area.

After a pause of several years Henley and Grange Historical Society volunteers are working to complete categorisation of our extensive history collection of some 3000 items. We are updating our system of cataloguing which involves creating a paper record and a database entry for each item with digital additions.

Photographic, computer and lighting equipment loaned by the History Trust has enabled us to make a start on generating digital images of the objects and larger items, not previously accessed or viewed.

Woman and man bending over table and arranging objects on photo paper
Digitisation of the Henley and Grange Historical Society Collection

Once our volunteers had mastered the technology a ‘production line approach’ worked best. This requires several volunteers, a camera operator, another recording, and another preparing objects, re-cataloguing and labelling them afterwards.

Japanese style paper fan printed with image of a beach with a jetty and tram.
Souvenir fan printed with an image of a horse drawn tram at Henley jetty. Henley and Grange Historical Society Collection

This digitisation works with our updated Henley and Grange Historical Society website which we hope will provide easier access to our collection for our members as well as the wider community.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts John! We look forward to seeing more of the Henley and Grange Historical Society digitisation work.