From Freezer to Screen: Working with the Digitised Negatives

In this blog post, our former volunteer, Victoria Conner, shares her experience of working with the digitised negatives collection. We are deeply grateful for Victoria’s valuable contributions, which have greatly enhanced the accessibility of this collection.

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I have volunteered with the British Jesuit Archive intermittently since the summer of 2024. I have previously spent this time cataloguing paper-based collections, amongst other activities, which have expanded my knowledge and developed my skills in this area – which I had little prior experience with! This year, however, I have been asked to bring my existing knowledge and expertise in audio-visual archives and digital media management to the digitised photographs of the Heythrop collection. 

History of the digitisation

In 2019 the British Jesuit Archives undertook the digitisation of some 11,000 photographic negatives from the Heythrop collection, with the primary goal of improving accessibility. Digitisation was conducted by Bespoke Archive Digitisation, returning high-resolution negative scans, as well as low-resolution previews of the images as both negative and positive images.

Negative and positive versions of the same image, screenshot of File Explorer showing the three different versions created

The next step was to identify a way to both preserve these digital copies and make them accessible to Archive users. Preservica, a digital preservation software, was chosen as a place to store, preserve, catalogue, and share the digital negatives. The platform provides a way to store materials and automate preservation actions, while also providing access related features like metadata addition, hierarchical arrangement, and online discovery. Though separate from and lacking integration with the Archive’s existing catalogue, the functionality of and preservation technology provided within Preservica outweighed the benefits of full integration. Eventually, (hopefully!) the analogue negatives will be catalogued and the two separate catalogues can be cross-referenced.

Preservica

Accessibility was a particularly high priority when commencing this project, as the original negatives were uncatalogued. Luckily, though the material has not been catalogued previously, extensive shotlists were made at the time of creation and found their way to the archive, providing invaluable information about the people, places, and activities captured in the images. My job was to work through as many of those 11,000 negatives as possible, adding information about the content of the images from the shotlists (such as titles, descriptions, dates), information about the format of the original material, and metadata about the digital copies produced by the Bespoke Archive Digitsation Ltd (such as date and creator).

Methodological Considerations

Prior to undertaking this project, we had extensive discussions about methodology and how to approach the task. One of the key discussions centred on which descriptive standards to use from those provided in Preservica, and how best to use them to correctly convey the difference between the metadata for the original negative and its digital copy. Eventually, it was decided to employ two separate metadata templates – one for the digitisation information, and one for shotlist and cataloguing information.

Adding metadata to the negatives

Further consideration was given to the degree of adherence to existing information given within the shotlists and whether this should be altered or added to in any way. Though we largely input the shotlist information as is, some additions were made, such as the addition of full names where we could find them.

Original indexes / shotlist

The main methodological issues surrounded the use of Preservica in general, including learning how it worked, how to use it efficiently, and how best to check and review completed cataloguing. This took some practice and some reading up on the platform, as well as experimentation with settings and changing the way I viewed material in the various menu screens to better understand what had been completed, where cataloguing errors had been made, and where duplicate assets had been ingested by mistake. Further to this, I had to begin noting various quality control issues with the original files or the post-ingest material which required intervention of some kind to resolve.

However, even with these limitations and the learning curve of a new software platform, I still catalogued some 1,500 negatives in around 33 hours (spread over several sessions – not all at once!). This represents around 14% of the total collection – only 9,500+ to go!

Interesting finds

During the project, I’ve found some interesting images. Firstly, a group of images from the Chisawasha Mission in then Rhodesia (20340_0001 - 20344_0001), which was a recurring location in a collection of personal papers I catalogued in the Archive last year. It was very interesting to see more images of a place I’ve read so much about!

I also stumbled across some images of Royals at Heythrop, with images of Queen Elizabeth II riding a horse (20337_0001) while the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret ride in a carriage (20338_0001). If previous work in audiovisual archives has taught me anything, its that anything pertaining to the Royal family is likely to be highly requested by all sorts of users.

Lastly, I found several images from the photography darkroom at Heythrop (20169_0001 - 20171_0001). There’s a good chance that many of the photographs in the collection were processed and developed in this room.

Next steps

Though a lot of cataloguing has been completed, there’s still plenty to do for this collection! In addition to the continued upload, ingest, QC and cataloguing tasks, there are still several possibilities for future changes or additions to render the collection even more useful.

There have been extensive discussions about the addition of more subjective or thematic descriptions to the existing shotlists to improve discovery. Alongside this, efforts could be made to identify individuals who are not named or are only partially named in the shotlist which would also improve accessibility and discovery. These could then subsequently be cross-referenced into the main Archive catalogue.

Further under discussion is the provision of positive versions of the negative images and how they can be integrated into the existing Preservica arrangement, with a view to having the two versions associated but clearly distinct. This would likely be very useful, as the images are far easier to see and understand when rendered as positives, rather than the negative scans we currently have!