This is a short guide for those volunteers who have taken the time to visit an archive and photograph a volume, case book, or archive papers.
Equipment:
- Photography Equipment: A mobile phone or camera capable of taking clear, high-resolution images.
- Silent Shutter: You cannot have a shutter sound constantly going off in the reading rooms.
- Make sure you have enough storage, or a way to offload the images to make more room.
- Power Bank / Charge Cables
- Taking hundreds of photos is power intensive, make sure you have a way to recharge!
- Laptop (optional)
- Not necessary, but if phone storage is an issue, some way to transfer to a laptop is useful.
- Snack!
- It can be a long day, remember to take a snack/drink.
London Metropolitan Archive
- To view original documents during your visit you need to register for a free The London Archives History Card.
- Photography costs (~£20 to LMA) will be covered by the charity if your organisation cannot pay these fees.
- Archive Booked in Advance
- All the case books required begin H22/HT/B/26/ 001-012 are females, 013-020 are males.
- We can advise which file to book.
- it is sometimes best to book more than 1 in case the file is restricted when you arrive.
- Each file can contain as little as 200 cases, or as many as a 1000.
- A case can be 2 – 4 pages, sometimes with additional loose material/notes.
Photographing Case Books
Please follow these guidelines. Most case notes consist of 4 pages, and include a photograph. However, it can be pot luck, some are missing photographs, some have more than 1. Some case notes are 2 pages, and some contain loose extra pages.
Reference (Important)
- Take a photograph of the archive reference, if not attached, you can write this on a piece of paper and take a picture. This helps remember which file your are photographing.

Cover
- Take a photograph of the archive front cover, then continue through the inside pages, including any blank pages to ensure we get the complete archive.

Indexes
- If an archive contains an Index this is extremely helpful to us, so please take extra care to ensure these pages are clear and not blurred.

Case Notes
- Then take a photo of each case page, even if blank, and then a final close up of any photograph.
- Make sure you DO NOT CROP the corners off the page, the whole page needs to be in frame. If there are some details that you do not think show well, then do a close up after the full page photo.


Uploading
Once you have transferred the files to a PC or laptop, the best method if to send all the files via WeTransfer, a free bulk sending service. You can send hundreds of GB of date this way.
If you have more than one archive, I advise you break it up into multiple transfers.
Thank you for your help!
Any questions send to steve@hortoncemetery.org