The Courtauld’s Witt and Conway Photographic Libraries: Two approaches to digitisation

Abstract

The Courtauld Institute of Art is two years into a digitisation project of the Witt and Conway photograph archives (in addition to other, smaller collections) – a massive project that will make accessible over three million images of works of art from these internationally important photo collections. This article looks closely at the digitisation project and in particular, at the small army of volunteers assembled to carry out the digitisation and how this element of public engagement is essential to the success of the project.