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Industries / Publishing & Historic ResearchPublishing & Historic Research

Preserve the record, make it usable.

Archives, publishers, libraries, museums, research institutions, and heritage teams need digitization workflows that protect originals, preserve provenance, improve metadata, manage rights, and support scholarly access. SBL has delivered large-scale, heritage-grade record programs where the cost of a wrong record is loss of trust.

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01 Position

How do you digitize, enrich, and publish irreplaceable records without losing fidelity, provenance, or rights control.

FidelityThe digital record must preserve what matters in the original, including imperfections, labels, marginalia, scripts, and structure.
ProvenanceEvery item, image, transcription, metadata field, correction, and rights decision needs a defensible history.
RightsCopyright, publication status, restriction, consent, and collection rules must be visible in the workflow.
Research accessSearch, metadata, APIs, and interfaces must help scholars find and trust the record.
02 Challenges

What publishing & historic research teams need to control.

How do you digitize, enrich, and publish irreplaceable records without losing fidelity, provenance, or rights control?

Challenge 01
Non-destructive digitization
Fragile originals cannot be handled like ordinary documents.
Frame - capture discipline / handling reduction / QAOutcome - Less repeated handling and clearer quality control
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Challenge 02
OCR and transcription complexity
Historical handwriting, multi-script records, scientific labels, and degraded scans need review-aware pipelines.
Frame - OCR / HWR / human review / confidenceOutcome - Better searchable text with exception handling
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Challenge 03
Metadata integrity
Item descriptions, taxonomies, authority files, and catalog records must stay consistent across collection systems.
Frame - metadata enrichment / validation / authority controlOutcome - More reliable discovery and reuse
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Challenge 04
Rights and publication zoning
Collections often mix public-domain, restricted, third-party, Crown Copyright, or privately held material.
Frame - rights workflow / copyright zoning / approval evidenceOutcome - Safer publication paths
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Challenge 05
Researcher search and access
Digitized material is only useful if researchers can search, filter, cite, and inspect it.
Frame - search / APIs / IIIF / access designOutcome - Better scholarly access and citation support
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Challenge 06
Long-term preservation evidence
Digital collections need preservation context that will survive platform and staff changes.
Frame - OAIS / provenance / preservation metadataOutcome - Records that remain intelligible and governed over time
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We start with the records, handoffs and evidence publishing & historic research teams already depend on.

Book a heritage workflow consultation →
03 Platform fit

Actigen platform fit for Publishing & Historic Research
workflows.

Actigen can support heritage and publishing workflows where digitization, metadata, rights review, search, and publication need to operate on one governed backbone.

Platform fit

One workflow spine for collection intelligence.

Use Actigen patterns for digitization intake, OCR/HWR review, metadata enrichment, rights zoning, researcher search, access workflows, and preservation evidence.

4
Workflow packs
1
Governed path
ISO
Control fit
Pack 01

Digitization pipeline

capture, batch tracking, QA, handling notes

Pack 02

Metadata enrichment

catalog fields, authority control, validation

Pack 03

Rights review

copyright zoning, restrictions, approval history

Pack 04

Researcher search

full-text search, filters, citation support, APIs

Adjacent

Multiscript transcription

OCR/HWR, human review, confidence queues

Roadmap

Collection analytics

throughput, metadata completeness, rights status, search success

Explore

Explore the Actigen platform

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05 Metrics we move

The operating numbers that show progress.

We define success through the workflow metrics leaders can review: cycle time, backlog, evidence quality, exception rates and adoption.

M / 01Item throughputMeasured during delivery→M / 02Metadata completenessMeasured during delivery→M / 03Transcription exception rateMeasured during delivery→M / 04Rights-review statusMeasured during delivery→M / 05Researcher search successMeasured during delivery→M / 06Handling reductionMeasured during delivery→
06 Standards and controls

Governance built into the workflow.

Each industry page maps the controls that shape delivery: security, access, review history, interoperability, quality and operating ownership.

Layer 01

Preservation governance

provenance, preservation metadata, capture QA, batch history, and chain of custody.

Preservation governance
Layer 02

Metadata standards

Dublin Core, MARC, EAD, authority control, taxonomy rules, and validation.

Metadata standards
Layer 03

Access and interoperability

IIIF, API access, search indexes, citation support, and research workflows.

Access and interoperability
Layer 04

Rights and archive context

OAIS, NARA / UK National Archives context, copyright zoning, publication approvals, and restriction evidence.

Rights and archive context
07 Why SBL
6.5M%

Herbarium sheets processed for Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, preserving 200 years of botanical history for global research access.

"They have a high level of expertise working with a range of historic documents. Since 2015, we have completed 247 projects with them."
Rose Staveley-WadhamData Operations Manager, FindMyPast
08 Contact

Bring us the collection that must survive the next platform.

Tell us about the material, condition, metadata, rights constraints, access goals, and preservation requirements. We will recommend the first workflow to prove before scaling.

Reply within one business dayNDA on requestSenior team, call oneFidelity and provenance protected