An awful lot has happened to Collections since the last issue of Collections Chat. The previous issues were all expensively printed paper editions. Who has the resources to do that now? The industry has switched from transparencies and bikes to digits and email and largely consolidated into a handful of mega image warehouses.

Where we were concerned, the switch to digital was largely unplanned and occurred pretty much in the space of a month early in 2003. At the end of 2002 it was all “We’ll send a bike” and Special Delivery. By February 2003 the majority of delivery notes were being emailed. We hadn’t told anybody we could do this, though fortunately we could. It just happened.

The switch to digits has, for us, been fairly smooth, if not completely painless. We have stopped charging service fees, there has been considerable downward pressure on reproduction fees and the overwhelming presence of the mega libraries means that, like many of the specialists, researchers tend to arrive at our portals when they have struck out elsewhere. This has led to a considerable amount of belt tightening.

One of the features of Collections that seems to be keeping us going is that we still offer a personal service. Though we now have a searchable web site with over 36,000 pictures of the British Isles from which researchers can download pictures direct, we still have transparencies, should you want them, alongside the scans and digital originals and we will still do personal searches, transparencies can still be sent, but more usually we would send a personal lightbox combining pictures from all our available sources. In addition you have our considerable personal knowledge at your disposal so you would not have to plough through pages of irrelevant pictures to find the one you want.