Freeze Frame – Historic Polar Images 1845-1960

Project start date: 2007-04 Project end date: 2009-03
Freeze Frame is the result of a two-year digitisation project that brings together photographs from both Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Here you can discover the polar regions through the eyes of those explorers and scientists who dared to go into the last great wildernesses on earth. The Freeze Frame project set out to conserve many of the historical photographic negatives collections held in the Scott Research Polar Institute (SRPI), University of Camnbridge.
Subject domains: 
Methods usedCategory
2d Scanning and photographyData capture
Accessibility analysisStrategy and project management
Image enhancementData structuring and enhancement
ParsingData analysis
Usability analysisStrategy and project management
CurationStrategy and project management
preservationStrategy and project management
textContent types
Funding sources: 
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Content types created: 
Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used: 
Lucene, Adobe Photoshop, WordPress
Source material used:  
Over 20,000 photographic negatives from 1845-1960 representing some of the most important visual resources for research into British and international polar exploration. The manuscript reports and personal papers of the members of the Antarctic expeditions led by Captain RF Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Digital resource created:  
Digitisation of over 20,000 potographic negatives from 1845-1960 and related documentary resources, giving information from the personal journals of expedition members and official reports from the expeditions on which these photographs were taken. Through a series of interpretative web pages, e-learning and online learning resources, the project encourages discovery of the resources by users from a range of educational contexts. Detailed catalogue entries are provided for each image. All image captions are taken from original sources, where known. In digitising this resource the Scott Polar Research Institute has enabled browsing through the collection by date, expedition or photographer, or Searching the content directly. Documents relating to the digitisation and web development process may be accessed via the Project tab.
Data Formats created: 
PHP, Raw File Format (RAW), JPEG, TIFF, XML, pdf
Production of compressed JPEG files from uncompressed TIFF files for web dissemination
Metadata standards employed: 
Encoded Archival Description (EAD), SPECTRUM/MDA
Publications:  
"Face to Face, Polar Portraits", by Huw Lewis-Jones.

Institutions affiliated with this project: 

UK HE institutions involved:
University of Cambridge

Project staff and expertise: 

Principal staff member:Julian Dowdeswell, Naomi Boneham
Other staff:
External expertise:


Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record
Author(s) of recordNaomi Boneham
TitleFreeze Frame – Historic Polar Images 1845-1960
Record created2010-03-29
Record updated2010-03-29 16:49
URL of recordhttp://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2687
Citation of recordNaomi Boneham: Freeze Frame – Historic Polar Images 1845-1960.
<http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2687>
created: 2010-03-29, last updated 2010-03-29 16:49