An Cosantóir

www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 21 a collection of national importance. The main reason for this is that the technical capability to do so was unavailable until now – though our partnership with the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP). The National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP) The NCAP, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, is one of the largest collections of aerial imagery in the world, containing tens of millions of images (several petabytes of data) originating from both the UK and internationally. Similar to the Military Archives, the NCAP is a recognised 'place of deposit' of the UK National Archives under the Public Records Act, 1958. NCAP operates under Historic Environment Scotland (HES), the public body responsible for the care and promotion of Scotland's historic environment. The NCAP team, world leaders in their field with the latest high-tech equipment at their disposal, work in collaboration with archival institutions across the world that hold collections of historical aerial imagery to preserve, digitise and make their collections accessible online. Most notably this includes an exclusive relationship with the United States National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), the federal government agency responsible for military declassified aerial and satellite imagery. THE BENEFITS OF WORKING WITH NCAP This partnership is about far more than simply 'digitisation' – very often when people unfamiliar with the archival profession think of digitisation projects they focus on the scanning aspect. In reality, an archival digitisation project involves several work streams, of which the actual digitisation or scanning is most often the quickest and least complex part. The majority of this aerial photography is on aircraft film reels, which requires very specialist cleaning and conservation processes, as well as printed photographs and plotting maps. Some of the reels are beginning to exhibit signs of physical deterioration due to their age, including early stages of 'vinegar syndrome', and so physical conservation is a priority and is being conducted by the NCAP team prior to digitisation. NCAP will also rehouse the reels in new bespoke, preservation-grade plastic canisters, replacing the old and damaged metal ones. The team will carry out the necessary cataloguing (meeting professional archival description standards), collation and application of metadata, geolocation, hosting and dissemination of the images via the NCAP GeoPortal, which will also be accessible via a new collection landing-page on militaryarchives.ie once all of the material goes live. This is a project that the Military Archives team is particularly proud to have in progress; no other organisation in Ireland or Europe have the NCAP's range of expertise in the field of historic aerial imagery, making them uniquely placed to provide the Military Archives with the required suite of professional services. They say that 'success has many fathers', and it is true that this couldn't have happened without the work of members of the Military Archives past and present and our colleagues across the organisation, particularly the Air Corps, DF Finance Branch and Department of Defence. Due particular mention, however, is recently retired deputy head of the Archives, Commandant Sarah Colclough, who took the reigns as project manager and brought it over the line before hanging up her uniform. It was her dedication and belief in the national value of this collection that ensured its success and will be a fitting legacy to her time at the Military Archives when it is completed in 2026. Views of Dublin with prominent features like the River Liffey and Stephen's Green Hook Head Lighthouse Historical Aerial Oblique picture of Galway Docks

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