Digitisation Facility - BAS Archives and other physical collections

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The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is a world-leading centre for polar science and operations addressing issues of global importance and helping society adapt to a changing world. This position has been achieved through over 75 years of Antarctic endeavour undertaken by BAS and its predecessors, the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (F.I.D.S.) (1945-62) and the Second World War expedition Operation Tabarin (1943-45), which established the first permanent UK stations on the continent. This long history, illustrating the UK's leading role in the modern era of Antarctic scientific exploration and the challenges of living and working in an extreme environment, is captured by its significant physical collections, together constituting a unique and comprehensive account documenting all aspects of the organisations' activities. They include scientifically valuable long-term environmental, geological, biological and meteorological datasets, metadata and specimens, written records, maps, plans, film and photographic material. A testament to their importance was the inscription of a proportion of the archives collection, nearly ten thousand reports and nineteen thousand images, onto the UK Register of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme in 2018. As primary resource material, these collections are unparalleled in terms of their richness of detail and breadth of scope, and as such support original scientific, arts and humanities research, innovative cross-disciplinary projects and use by the general public. Examples include: the development of gender inclusivity in the Antarctic; geopolitical aspects of an international regime of environmental protection; the evolution of Antarctic architecture; and the psychological pressures of polar research. Scientists use the collections to extend data sets backwards in time, and source information vital to their understanding and continued use in globally significant research. Artists use them as source material. They inform the continued conservation of the UK's historic Antarctic buildings, and support communication activities to improve the relationship between science and society. But much of these collections remain locked away. BAS does not currently have the in-house capability to digitise these collections efficiently in large numbers. Nor does it have the capability to digitise the larger records and objects within its collections. An upgrade of equipment, to establish a designated and permanent digital facility, will enable BAS to support its aim to increased access to, and derive local, national and global impact from, its information and data assets for both internal and external researchers. It will enable a greater amount and range of material from across BAS' physical collections to be digitised, and a high quality of output in line with best practice and relevant standards. At the same time, it will decrease the risks to the collections by reducing physical manipulation and handling and removing the need to send material off-site for digitisation and, by generating high-quality digital surrogates, will increase the resilience of the data and information in the collections. It will enable researchers to unlock the data and information in the collections remotely, and support the re-use and combining of existing data in innovative ways, strategies of increasing importance in the current restricted situation.