+ Join us at the 2018 Scanathon in London, Zurich and Helsinki!

The READ project is organising an exciting international Scanathon on Friday 8 June 2018, with parallel events taking place in Finland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

We invite you to come along to learn about new tools that we are developing for ‘digitisation on demand’ in archives.  The event will showcase the DocScan mobile app and the ScanTent device, which are designed to help archival users take high quality images of historical documents with their mobile phones. Users can use these tools to digitise documents for their own research or help to expand the digitised holdings of an archive.

The 2018 Scanathon will take place on the morning of Friday 8 June 2018 in three different European cities.  The events are free to attend but places are limited, so please sign up below:

• The National Archives, London, United Kingdom – register to attend
• The National Archives of Finland, Helsinki, Finland – register to attend
• The State Archives of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland – send an email to attend

At the Scanathon you will learn about the capabilities of DocScan and the ScanTent and the technology behind them.  You will have the chance to practice using the tools to digitise a range of historical documents and see how you can generate high-quality images in an efficient manner.  We will also welcome your feedback on our prototype tools and their suitability for archival work.  There will be a live video link between the different European archives and finally the chance to win a ScanTent for your archive!

DocScan and the ScanTent are being developed by one of the READ project partners, the Computer Vision Lab at the Technical University of Vienna.  These Scanathon events are organised by the Bentham Project at University College London, the National Archives of Finland and the State Archives of Zurich.  The London Scanathon is generously hosted by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.