NMS - Imaging Centre Enhancement (N-ICE)

National Museums Scotland (NMS) is an IRO holding one of the largest and most diverse national heritage collections in the UK. Our collection comprises over 12.4 million objects across five collecting areas - Science & Technology, Scottish History & Archaeology, Natural Sciences, World Cultures, and Art & Design. NMS has four display sites - the National Museum of Scotland, the National Museum of Rural Life, the National Museum of Flight and the National War Museum. Our fifth site, the National Museums Collection Centre (NMCC), is a facility of national and international significance. Located in Granton, Edinburgh, NMCC is the heart of NMS' collections research and care with 99.8% of the estimated 12.4 million items held, accessed, cared for and researched at this site. NMCC includes facilities for conservation, heritage science, photography and digitisation.

Imaging is a key element of any conservation and research undertaken on the museum's collections. At our NMCC facility, NMS science and digitisation infrastructures were consolidated in 2017 to focus on imaging of our objects for academic research, conservation work and overall to preserve our collections. Increasingly hard to service and maintain, and functioning with lower efficiency, and throughput key items of existing capital equipment are now beyond their normal life span. All equipment requested focus on our identified need for imaging techniques, particularly techniques that are non-invasive, high-resolution and can be used in concert to inform our understanding of a range of materials.

We propose an upgrade of our current SEM to a variable pressure (VP) field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), with a large chamber and set-up with new analytical detectors. The upgraded system will create an analytical platform into the next decade which will be a formidable resource for researchers working on the collections and in the field of heritage science, archaeological science, chemistry, and geological and botanical collections in Scotland and the North of the UK. The addition of a high-resolution digital microscope, available to be mounted on a long-reach flexible arm, will allow in-situ investigation of large artefacts for research, during conservation or for example in the museum's storage areas or galleries (saving time and increasing the range of objects that can be studies). The upgrade our current X-ray system to a more powerful unit with a larger enclosure and working with computed radiography (CR) will greatly increase the range of applications as well as efficiency and throughput and overcome environmental issues.

To support our programme of imaging equipment our photography studios will be enhanced by the purchase of equipment to take multi-spectral images of objects for research; the upgrade of our photography studio spin equipment will enhance the facility so that it can capture 3D photogrammetry with a resolution appropriate for detailed research investigation; lighting will be enhanced so that images can be captured in more detail for study. Finally, the replacement of our research library flatbed scanner with a Bookeye A2 Professional Book Scanner will allow us to digitise our Special Collections at a pace which is currently unobtainable.

The investment from the AHRC Capability for Collections Fund (CapCo) will provide timeous resources to replace and update key collections science and digitisation equipment essential to supporting NMS strategic aims. Crucially, the NMS-Imaging Centre Enhancement (N-ICE) funding will secure the continuation of the NMS tradition of collaboration with academic and heritage institutions, in the UK and internationally.