IAA Scanner Appeal

Help the Irish Architectural Archive acquire the capacity to digitise its drawings

The Irish Architectural Archive, Ireland built environment resource, holds some 500,000 photographs and 2.5 million drawings and related documents. As a cumulative body of material the holdings of the Archive represent the greatest single source of information on Ireland’s buildings and those who designed them.

While the Archive has the capacity to digitise a broad range of the material it holds including photographic material in formats from to glass plate negatives to 35mm slides to photographic prints, it dose not currently have the capacity to digitise architectural drawings.

Drawings have to be sent out to external digitisation or photographic services. The use of such services places the material at risk during transportation, causes substantial delays (up to two weeks), and, critically, greatly increases the cost for anyone looking for hi-resolution digital copies.

A capital investment in suitable digitisation equipment will allow the Archive to quickly and cost-effectively provide high-quality, hi-resolution, digital copies of architectural drawings up to and including A0 in size. With the other digitisation equipment already in use, this will mean that well in excess of 99.5% of all holdings can be digitised on site by the Archive itself.

The cost of the required A0 scanning equipment is €35,000. The Archive has secured a grant of €20,000 toward this cost but must now raise the balance. 

 

Can you help? 


THANK YOU