Digitisation
In recent years the digitisation of archived material and stocks has opened up new presentation opportunities for archives and other institutions that manage cultural heritage items (e.g. libraries and museums), whether in a reading room or on the internet. At the same time valuable documents are protected and secured for the long term, as it is no longer always necessary to make the original copies available in the Reading Room. The Institute for the History of Frankfurt continually endeavours to increase the share of digitised material. To do so, we have a well-equipped Digitisation and Photographic Unit which handles major scanning jobs for users of the Institute as well as any digitisation that is required by the Institute itself. We have also started promoting wide-ranging in-house digitisation campaign recently. As well applying our own clearly defined digitisation activities, we will eventually want to work with external service providers under public-private partnerships and externally funded projects. The workplaces of nearly all our specialists are equipped with simple scanners, so that they can quickly handle any small scanning jobs for users. Upon arrangement, however, users are equally welcome to carry out their own digitisation in the Reading Room (e.g. using their own cameras or one of our A2 scanners).