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Digitising in the cool store

How we met an urgent request to digitise historic photographs for the Prime Minister's visit to Sāmoa.

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Negatives are among our most fragile archives. We hold them in refrigerated cool storage to keep them at a low a stable temperature. They react badly to sudden and drastic temperature changes - the stress can cause irreversible damage to the image. Also, any sudden increases in humidity can increase the risk of degrading the acetate base of the negatives, which leads to vinegar syndrome.

The cool vaults keep negatives cold and dry, preventing deterioration. If we want to get negatives out of the cool store we do it progressively, in careful stages, increasing the temperature with each step. This is known as acclimatisation. It prevents the temperature from increasing too quickly, which can result in condensation, damaging the emulsion of the negative.

Urgent request

But what if an urgent request for digitisation comes from the Prime Minister, who wants to take a gift of framed historic photographs on her visit to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship with Sāmoa? To get a high-quality image we need to digitise the negatives – and they are in the cool store, sitting at a cool 2°C.

We couldn’t risk reducing the acclimatisation time to bring the negatives up to the digitisation lab to capture them in time to meet the deadline. So, the digi team went to the fridge!

Clockwise from left: A man stands at a scanner, which has a document on itl the same man, with the document before him; a woman stands before a computer screen, displaying a black-and white image.; the man and woman stand at the screen.
Te Maeatanga working in the Cool Store – a temporary capture station at 12°C

In the cool store

Te Maeatanga speaks of recalling memories and bringing archives into the light. This was certainly the work of Jonathan Newport from Research Services who spent a day finding and selecting the photographs for the Prime Minister’s gift.

The time it would take to research (1 day), acclimatise the negatives (48 hours) and dry the prints (24 hours) extended well beyond departure time for the Prime Minister’s flight.

Preservation Technician Simon Jay suggested capturing the four negatives while they were in stage two of acclimatisation in the 12° C vault. Working in the cold – and quite a cramped space – Simon set up a temporary capture station to produce the images, with Imaging Technician Hayley Childs and Digitisation Team Lead Nigel Roper.

Once captured, the files were handed to the Alexander Turnbull Library, who produced high-quality prints of the images.

Just in time

Some quick thinking and innovation by a crack team across Archives and National Library overcame the obstacles to deliver in time to make it into the PM’s luggage for her plane to Sāmoa.

The photos she gave the Sāmoan Prime Minister were taken 60 years ago, when the country became independent.

Find out more about the Prime Minister's visit to Sāmoa – NZ Herald

Chrissy Knight August 2022