Background and scope of our digital holdings

Only a very small proportion of the Middle East Centre Archive's holdings have been digitised. Initially digitisation work focused upon photographic collections, as the Archive did not have an A3 scanner and most of our historic papers are larger than A4 (as foolscap was the common paper size). As the Archive now has an A3 scanner some work has been carried out on scanning paper collections. Our digitisation programme is ongoing, so our digital holdings will continue to grow.

Access

Putting digitised material online counts as publishing it. Consequently we can only put online material which is out of copyright, or for which we own copyright or have permission of the copyright owner.

Access to Digitsed Photographs

We have made available online some of our digitised photographic collections. Please see our online photo galleries. For a wider overview of our photographic collections please see our Photographic Resources Webpage.

Access to Digitised Papers

The Robert Morris Collection is available online. The Rev. Robert Leslie Morris travelled in 1861-1862 acorss Spain, France and Italy to Egypt and then across Sinai to Aqaba, Petra and on to the Holy Land.  He accompanied Sir Capel Molyneux and joined with others for the had trip to Petra. The Robert Morris Collection consists of two volumes containing copies of letters that Robert Morris wrote to his mother during his travels.

The majority of our digitised paper collections are not available online. However we can supply digital copies under the same conditions that apply for self service digital photography and photocopying. Namely the copies have to be for private study and non commercial research and the standard copyright form needs to be filled in.

Digital copies are supplied via a link to Dropbox.

Cost of Digitised Papers

We charge 10p (excluding VAT) per digital file (typically one digital file is one page of text).

Transcripts to oral history interviews take considerably longer to create than digitising text through digital photography or scanning. The cost per page of oral history transcripts is thus 30p per page. This represents a twelfth of the cost to the Archive of creating transcripts and money raised from transcripts will be set aside to fund transcribing work for interviews that have yet to be transcribed. Sound files cost £5.00 per interview.

For material that has not already been digitised we calculate costs per page according to the time taken to scan the material. In such cases a cost estimate is made prior to starting the digitisation work. Please note that there will be some material that we are not able to digitise for preservation reasons. For example tightly bound volumes which would be damaged by being placed on a flatbed scanner. We also reserve the right to decline carrying out new digitisation work depending on the labour resources and ability of the Archive to carry out such work.

Please note that the above prices do not include VAT.

Please note that our policy is not to charge for self-service photography of our paper collections. So researchers are welcome to visit the Archive and take photographs of documents with their own digital cameras, providing the standard copyright form is filled out. For further information on copying material during a visit to the Archive please see our Copying of Archives webpage.

Scope of Digitised Paper Collections

The Middle East Centre Archive has a small but growing number of paper collections that have been digitised. These currently include the following collections:

• Ancketill Collection
• Sir Hugh Boustead Collection (Box 1 File 2)
• Alexandro Buccianti Collection (the Italian manuscript)
• Sir Alan Cunningham Collection
• Deane Drummond Collection (1/1 SAS Operations)
• Walter Flinn Collection (Correspondence 1903-1911)
• Betty Gurney Collection
• Sir Henry Gurney Collection
• Helena Harrison Collection
• Jerusalem and East Mission Collection (Box 8 File 3)
• Helen Lotbiniere Collection
• Mylrea Collection
• Sir Charles Tegart Collection (Boxes 1-4)
• H.M. Wilson Collection

We also have transcripts of Palestine Police Oral history interviews, as well as some born digital material in digital form.

Please contact the Archivist at debbie.usher@sant.ox.ac.uk for further details as to what papers are available in digital format.

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