Why Your Digitised Archive Is Only Half the Story

Over the past two decades, heritage organisations across the UK have invested heavily in digitisation. Millions of photographs, manuscripts, maps, and audio recordings have been scanned, photographed, and transferred to digital formats. And rightly so — preserving fragile materials in digital form is essential for long-term access.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: digitisation without cataloguing is storage, not access.

The cataloguing gap

A digitised photograph without metadata is just a file on a server. Without knowing who took it, when, where, or what it depicts, it’s invisible to researchers, educators, and the public. It might as well still be in the box.

Many organisations completed digitisation projects with limited cataloguing budgets. The priority was capture — get everything scanned before it deteriorates further. The plan was to “catalogue it properly later.” But later rarely comes. Staff are stretched. Backlogs grow. And the collection sits in digital limbo.

“We have 40,000 digitised images. About 3,000 have what I’d call usable metadata. The rest have filenames and not much else.” — Local Studies Librarian, Northern England

What’s at stake

Uncatalogued collections aren’t just an inconvenience. They represent real, measurable costs:

Missed funding opportunities. Grant bodies increasingly ask for evidence of collection accessibility and public engagement. If your collection isn’t discoverable, it’s hard to make the case for its value.

Lost research potential. Academics, family historians, and journalists can’t find what they don’t know exists. Every uncatalogued item is a story that stays untold.

Reduced public engagement. Online collections drive website traffic, social media engagement, and community connection. But only if people can search and find what’s there.

A new approach

This is where AI-powered cataloguing changes the picture. By combining large language models with computer vision and audio processing, it’s now possible to generate rich, structured metadata at scale — across all formats.

A handwritten letter becomes a fully described catalogue record. A photograph is analysed for people, places, objects, and time period. An oral history recording is transcribed, summarised, and indexed by topic.

Critically, this isn’t about replacing the archivist. It’s about giving them a powerful first draft to work from. The AI handles the heavy lifting; the professional provides the judgement, context, and quality assurance.

The next step

If your organisation has a digitised collection that’s under-catalogued, the good news is that the technology to address this is now mature, affordable, and practical. The first step is a conversation about what you have and what you need.

Your collection has stories to tell. Let’s make sure people can find them.