Epson Scanner gets to work at The British Museum

The British Museum has recently acquired a new Epson scanner, the Epson Expression 13000XL Pro, to aid in its efforts to digitise and catalogue the museum’s extensive collection of slides, negatives, and other archival materials. The device was acquired through Epson partner and the UK’s number 1 Scanner Supplier, The Scanner Shop.

The museum was looking for a versatile scanning solution that could handle a variety of media types and provide high-quality results, and so reached out to The Scanner Shop to explore options.

Sam Adamson, IT Project Manager at The British Museum, commented: “Key to the museum was capturing information written on the mounts or frames of the slides and negatives, as this contextual data is important for our cataloguing and documentation efforts. This was possible with the Epson scanner by utilising its two different light sources within the device, which meant scanning the actual slide using the Transparency Adaptor of the scanner, and then using the lower light source to capture the slide mount. This flexibility was crucial for the museum, as we have a diverse collection that includes both film-based and paper-based archival materials.”

Together with Neil Atkinson from The Scanner Shop, Epson provided onsite guidance and support to the museum's digitisation team. This included everything from setting up the equipment; navigating the software; walking them through the resolution, bit depth, and file format settings; emphasising the importance of correctly balancing image quality and file size; and troubleshooting any issues that may arise.

Using the Epson Expression 13000XL Pro, the museum can also create customized scanning profiles to ensure consistent results, and realise the benefits of having a dedicated, colour-calibrated workstation to get the most out of the scanner's capabilities.

Adamson continues: “The British Museum welcomes the Epson scanner as part of our efforts to preserve and share the cultural heritage in the collection. This device has great potential to streamline our digitisation workflows and improve the quality of our digital records, and I’m looking forwards to realising this full potential moving forwards.”

Neil Atkinson from The Scanner Shop commented: "When it comes to technology like the Epson Expression 13000XL Pro, there are a lot of nuanced settings and features that can really optimise the scanning process, especially when you're dealing with a diverse range of media like slides, negatives, and photographs. Having that technical guidance upfront can help you get the most out of the scanner and ensure you're capturing high-quality, consistent results across your entire digitization project. We’re pleased we were able to deliver this to The British Museum together with Epson."