Our Services
Digitise
We offer an end-to-end solution to protect and preserve your precious photographs, paper documents, bound volumes, maps, artworks, objects, audio and visual records. Through digitisation, cultural heritage collections can be made searchable, accessible, and easily reproduced.
Our customers include galleries, libraries, archives, museums, central and local government, Iwi, universities and research organisations, schools, clubs and societies, genealogists, unions, religious organisations, commercial enterprises, artists, families and individuals.
Our expert staff are trained in handling precious and delicate materials and know how to protect and care for your unique records, objects and taonga. From cultural heritage objects to modern and robust materials, NZMS has the experience, equipment and processes to digitise objects of any size, or any quantity.
NZMS operates from four locations throughout New Zealand with specialised and custom-built equipment that can be used in our specialist digitisation suites or on-site at your location if your material cannot be transported.
We assist customers in developing their digitisation strategy, including the creation of policies and procedures. We provide digitisation services to support their strategy as well as providing cloud-based collection management and community engagement platforms. For those customers wanting to develop an in-house capability we will assess your requirements, recommend and supply equipment, provide training, and help you establish an appropriate physical environment.
Books and Documents
Our equipment and processes minimise handling and stress on items. We use a variety of book cradles and specialist equipment to hold bound volumes gently but securely. Fragile books, subject to the customers instructions, can be captured at 180° or 90° to 120° opening as needed.
Unbound & Flat material
No matter what kind of unbound or flat material you own, we capture it accurately to create a digital surrogate. Examples of unbound and flat material we digitise include;
- Photographic prints, negatives, slides & transparencies
- Glass plates & lantern slides
- Paintings & works of art
- Maps, plans & scrolls
- Card indexes & reference prints
- Microfilm, fiche & aperture cards
Projects we are proud of include digitising the Treaty of Waitangi for the He Tohu exhibition, and created the images for the South Island Black Map project and the LINZ Imperial Plan series.
Audio Visual
Digitisation of audio and video magnetic material has become a matter of high priority. The medium is unstable, and the equipment needed to play or digitise is no longer produced.
At NZMS we put conservation first, we ensure that your audio and video media is put through a unique appraisal and assessment prior to any digital processing and we take the utmost care to stablise each item, using approved conservation techniques, before digitisation begins.
We offer advice on digital formats and will provide a high-resolution preservation master plus access file in the formats that suit your needs.
Audiovisual media we digitise:
- Video Tape
- Reel to Reel Audio
- Compact Audiocassettes
- Vinyl Records
- Motion Picture Film (8mm and 16mm)
Print SERVICES
We print to your requirements, from fine art reproductions, to access prints for you to share.
A well-produced print can replace a delicate original, allowing you to safely store important images away from the damaging effects of UV light, or be given as a thoughtful gift for a special occasion.
Microfilm
Microfilm remains a favoured medium for preserving documents such as newspapers, serials and manuscripts due to its reliability, durability, and its independence from technology. Microfilm mediums include 16/35mm roll film, microfiche, and aperture card.
Today we create microfilm from digital images, or paper originals. Microfilm is eye-legible and when processed and stored correctly, has an expected life span of 500 years and can be easily duplicated and digitised for access. Our microfilm is created on high contrast 35 mm silver halide microfilm and conforms to ISO standards.
NZMS are recognised as the world-class industry leader in New Zealand for microfilming and scanning historical and archival documents and have regularly contributed to the development and upkeep of national and international standards for imaging technologies since 1996.
If you are new to discovering Microfilm, we have also put together a handy resource of Microfilm Terminology.
Additional microfilm services & products include consultancy, material assessment, condition reporting, preservation microfilming, disaster recovery, storage, micropublishing, microfilm scanning, digital microfilm, and acetate recovery. We also supply microfilm reels & boxes, as well as readers and scanners and we are Australasian agents for EMP microfilm and chemicals.
Equipment
When it’s time to develop more in-house digitisation capability, NZMS will help you scope options and then supply you with the most appropriate equipment.
NZMS brings years of experience to this complex process, supplying the software, hardware, training and on-going support needed for organisations to build in-house capability. We are the largest and most trusted agency in Aotearoa New Zealand with a team of experts available to discuss your objectives and stakeholder requirements, analyse your materials and design a solution that meets your needs – and your budget.
Advise
Our team can advise on policy, processes, staffing, standards, equipment, software, set-up, and training to assist you in the creation or adaptation of your digitisation approach.
To understand your digitisation requirements, we will review your collections and the stakeholder requirements. We will also assess the condition of your collections to determine what handling limitations exist, and what technology is appropriate for the size, shape, and format.
Supply
NZMS are authorised re-sellers of a wide range of equipment that has been tried and trusted over the years through mass digitisation projects by our team of technical experts.
We will make sure that the equipment you choose is fit for purpose and optimised for your digitisation strategy. When we can’t source an appropriate off-the-shelf solution for you, we custom design and build equipment that will meet your needs.
Maintain
Our clients have access to ongoing equipment support, maintenance, and assistance. If your equipment needs maintenance our experienced technicians will assess, fix, and identify any issues and quickly get you back into production.
All our recommended equipment comes with a minimum 12-month warranty and in some cases a 3-year extended warranty is available. We help you with some common maintenance issues such as calibration, lubrication, wear and tear, and lamp replacement. Our Maintenance Contract provides peace of mind through regular scheduled preventative maintenance visits, additional staff training, and guaranteed service levels.
Consultancy
Our consultancy services are designed to cater to your specific needs.
Whether you require guidance to establish in-house digitisation capability or to draft funding applications, our team is here to assist. NZMS has worked with clients across Aotearoa New Zealand to help them transform business objectives into concrete collection preservation strategies.
Our team has extensive experience determining standards, developing procedures, and customising training courses to meet the unique requirements of our clients.
We also regularly present workshops on digitisation around the country and at national conferences such as LIANZA, as well as delivering more tailored regional courses for small groups.
NZMS also has a track record of involvement in imaging standards and has been actively involved in national and international advisory groups for many years.
Online Community Engagement and Management Software
Recollect makes your content easy to find and access, enabling you to reach out and empower your stakeholder communities. Build your identity, enrich your collections, capture and manage new content and discuss new ideas from anywhere in the world with our cloud-based software.
Discover
Recollect brings information to the surface more intuitively by creating a virtual breadcrumb trail through your collection, allowing better, simpler management and reporting. A Smart Collection Management system, integrated with search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques and tools.
Access
Recollect ensures that content is accessible to the user in as much detail as you choose. Documents are OCR’d on ingest, making the content searchable; images can be stored and viewed at maximum resolutions using pan and zoom tools or downloaded in a size that makes sense; audio and video content can be bookmarked and tagged to make information searchable and easier to access.
Engage
Recollect provides many tools that enable communities and stakeholders to share their knowledge and discoveries with their peers and to provide contributions to collections. From recollections, tagging content, providing suggested corrections to providing new items of content or knowledge, Recollect enables a carefully moderated environment that ensures owners retain integrity in their collections, while their communities engage!
Manage
With a rich graphical user interfaces and flexible configuration, Recollect simplifies and streamlines the management of collections. From accessioning, arrangement and description, conservation, stock taking, loan management and disposal, Recollect ensures that you can efficiently manage your collections.