Digitising family history and whakapapa

This page includes guidance about techniques and formats for digitising family history and whakapapa, including photographs, documents, and objects.

Create long-lasting digital copies

Like many of the pieces of paper, film and tape that make up records of our past, digital content is not built to last. Digitised copies are just as difficult to care for and keep as the originals, and in some cases can disappear much faster. Family photos from over one hundred years ago may be still easily viewable, yet a compact disc of photos may corrupt and become unreadable within a few years. It is important to use digital scanners, cameras and storage in a way that will increase, not shorten, the life of your family's historical records.

Planning a digitisation project

Whether you plan to scan old family photos, transcribe old letters, or record a new family history digitally, the software, formats, and settings you choose will directly affect whether your digital copies will be long-lasting and usable over time.

Used wisely, digital tools will allow you to share and build a resource that will last for generations. Here are some steps you can take to help make that happen.

1. Choose what to make digital

Deciding what to digitise for you family history and how to organise it can be a little overwhelming. Sometimes it's difficult to know where to start: should you scan those slides, get that videotape digitised, or transcribe a journal? Some basic planning and prioritising can help get you started. If you already know what you want to digitise, skip to the next section.

2. Have a purpose

You will have more chance of success if you can keep your project focused on just one of the following purposes to start with:

to make material easily accessible digitally to family members or others
to produce a faithful digital copy to protect a fragile or single original
to completely replace a failing original by making a new digital copy
to create a digital copy to become part of a new family record.

You can work out your purpose by asking yourself which of these is most important to happen first. Chances are there is no need to do everything at once, so take your time. Having a clear purpose will also make it easier to seek advice or help if you need it.

3. Look after the original

Digital tools make it easy to create copies. You may think digital copying is like creating a digital time capsule or archive of your original family records, but digital copies are more vulnerable to damage or loss than many of your old family photos or papers. Unless your purpose is to completely replace a failing original (e.g. an old audiotape that is beginning to decay), always consider the protection and care of the original materials you want to copy first. If you can extend the life of the original while making use of the digital copy for viewing, sharing and adapting it will give you the best of both worlds. Questions to consider include:

are there any existing copies of the original, or is it unique?
are lots of people interested in accessing or viewing the original?
is the original being damaged by being used or not being properly cared for?
is the original difficult to access, view or use?

If the original is unique and you answered yes to any of the remaining questions, then digital copying may be an excellent way to help protect the original from further damage or loss. Keeping the originals for as long as possible while enjoying use of the digital copies will enable your heirs and descendants to enjoy all aspects of your family records. They can even make their own digital copies in the future using equipment and software that will be significantly better than anything used today.

4. Use the right techniques

Without some attention to preparation, equipment setup and file management, the results of your copying can be disappointing. If you have not had much experience at digital copying or recording, do a run-through with practice items beforehand until you are satisfied with the result. If you are using a scanner or camera, check that it is clean and free of dust and smudges, and that all the details of the item can be seen in focus and without distortion. For digital recorders, check things like power supply, recording volumes and test the sound quality. Other techniques to improve your result include:

ensuring that you have prepared and organised the material you want copied or recorded before you start
use the right equipment designed for the job to ensure it will not damage or distort your material
have a method to consistently name and describe each digital file you create
unless digitising for a one-time use, choose a digital file format that will work with multiple software programmes and hardware.

The more attention you pay to learning and practising the techniques of copying and recording, the less likely you are to have to repeat the process. An organised approach will also enable you to complete the task more quickly.

5. Add long-term value

Your digital copy is now potentially a new family heirloom, so how will others in future find it, know what it is, and be able to make use of it? How can you add further value to the item? For instance, you could take some photos of the person you are interviewing or the things they talk about for a digital recording, photograph the outside of a journal or an envelope as well as scanning the contents, or scan the writing on the back of an old photo. Some things to think about include:

is the copy or recording complete enough for someone to reference or understand without the original?
is it able to be found and used by others, whether family or future researchers, for their own projects?
are there additional qualities and context that can be captured by making more than one kind of copy or recording?
is there some way for others to know the value of the digital copies if you are no longer around to look after them?

Digitising family photographs, documents, and objects

Whether you are using a digital scanner or a camera, before starting out with digital copying, it is important to understand the big difference between what you see on a computer screen and what can be printed out.

Cameras, scanners and monitors all create colour with light, while with printed items, colour is created with pigments. Viewing digital images on a monitor or projector transmits coloured light to your eyes, while viewing printed materials involves reflecting light off the colour pigment. As the number of colours transmitted by a monitor is much greater than the colours possible with pigment inks, a printed digital image is likely to be less dynamic (not as bright) in its colours than the same image seen on a monitor.

In contrast, the number of pixels on most monitors is many times less than the equivalent dots needed to print out a photograph. A portrait image that can fill the screen from top to bottom on a standard 17- or 19-inch LCD monitor is barely large enough to print out as a passport photo. It takes a minimum of 2 megapixels for a digital image to print out as a standard snapshot or postcard sized photograph, enough to fill the width and height of a 24 inch widescreen monitor or a full HD television screen.

Scanner resolution

When digitising any photographic image or document it is vital that you judge what size the image or document needs to be if it is printed out. As a rule of thumb, allow photographs to be increased by at least two times, and for documents to be kept at minimum at full size. That means for scanning photographs, have a scanner setting of 600 ppi (300 ppi x 2) and for scanning documents have a scanner setting of 300 ppi. If you are scanning negatives or slides you will need a higher resolution to achieve the same result. The Creating Digital Content guide has more detail on the formula to use.

Image format

The file format you save from your scanner will make all the difference to the quality of the resulting image. The best format for creating images that will last is TIFF (or .TIF). TIFF is an open standard maintained by Adobe, and is what is known as an uncompressed or lossless format. If your scanner does not have an option to save a TIFF, you should choose JPEG (or .JPG) at the highest quality setting (a setting of 10 or 12 in most software). JPEG is also an open standard but is a compressed or 'lossy' format. While it is a compromise format, at its highest setting JPEG does a reasonable job of keeping most of the image information. Even if you are scanning black and white images or pages, set your scanner to copy at a minimum of 24-bit RGB. This will make images much easier to edit or correct later on, and more versatile to use. There's more detail in our Photography and Imaging guide.

Digital cameras

For your digital camera, the sharpness and quality of your lens is much more important than the megapixel count. Using good lighting, a tripod, and the right camera settings for your environment will help get a better quality image. You should also capture using the highest quality (largest) image setting on your camera to minimise the destructive effects of image compression. For most objects you are wanting to photograph, a capture resolution of at least 6 megapixels is adequate using the best quality camera you can find. There's more detail in our Photography and Imaging guide.

Recording family history digitally

If you are making digital audio recordings, there are two main things to look for in equipment: the ability to record in uncompressed WAVE (.WAV) format, and an external high-quality microphone. Dictaphones and memo recorders are not designed for this purpose and will leave you with a poor-quality recording that is both hard to listen to for any length of time and difficult to archive. If you are on a limited budget, a good USB microphone attached to a laptop can provide a decent result. There are also microphone attachments designed for use with Apple iPods that are worth investigating, as iPods record in the high quality WAVE format. When searching online through auction or e-commerce sites, look for microphones or microphone attachments that record in stereo and are described as designed for podcasters, musicians and journalists.

Digital Video tape (DV tape) camcorders will give you the most flexibility to archive your recordings, but if that is not an option, look for camcorders with large hard drives and the ability to save the recording as H.264 or AVCHD format on your hard drive. Expect to buy one or more external hard drives for your computer for backing up, as a recording transferred to DVD will be much lower quality than your original. Avoid camcorders that record directly to mini-DVDs, as they often do not work with DVD players. As with audio recordings, it is worth investing in an external microphone for your camcorder. A number of manufacturers have models that can be attached to the recorder directly, or you can buy one with a stand. Having a modern fast computer with lots of RAM and hard-drive space for your video editing is also essential, as it takes a lot of processing power to edit video. There's more information in our Creating Digital Audio guide.

Protecting your digital copies

To protect against hard drive or disk failure, you need to keep a second copy of all your important files on an external hard drive or copied to CD or DVD-ROM. If using CDs or DVDs, buy a recognised brand name and do not use re-writable disks - not all disks are the same.

If you want to protect against theft, fire or natural disaster, you should also make a third back-up copy that you keep in a different place from where your computer is. Remember to make fresh back-ups regularly and whenever you have created content that is important or irreplaceable.

When you complete major milestones in your family history projects, one of the easiest things you can do with your digital copies is make lots more copies and give them to all your family members. That way many people get to share and experience your family's history, and you have an excellent way of helping ensure your digital history and stories are protected for many years to come.