News Celebrating International Volunteer Day! Spotlight on NCAP Digital Connectors

Celebrating International Volunteer Day! Spotlight on NCAP Digital Connectors

A black and white oblique aerial photo of a castle on a hill in a small town. A large river runs alongside the town and is crossed by a stone bridge. A landscape of fields and woods stretches into the distance.

On International Volunteer Day, December 5th, the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP) is introducing you to a new volunteer role: The NCAP Digital Connector. 

NCAP has been working with the volunteers team at Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to develop this new volunteering role as we reach out and draw on expertise across our community. Currently a pilot project, NCAP is engaging with volunteers from various backgrounds including the Medmenham Association, an association of former and serving Imagery Analysts (formerly known as Photographic Interpreters). We are delighted to initially welcome 10 NCAP Digital Connectors to the volunteering programme.

A black and white vertical aerial photo of a landscape. A complex network of hills and valleys crosses the landscape. The hills are very heavily terraced.

An image of a dramatically terraced landscape in Cyprus awaits footprinting; Collection: Directorate of Overseas Surveys, Sortie: 162/CY/0001, Frame: 0031 (26 September 1976)

Volunteers will engage with already digitised aerial photographs from the NCAP Collection, looking to footprint, or identify the geographical area covered, by each image. This involves examining each image in turn and using the original sortie plots – diagrams of the aircraft’s known flight path – to match the photos with a modern map. Where there is no sortie plot available, the volunteers will use their research skills to identify the locations of the photographs. This will make these images usable by, and accessible to, the public on NCAP’s brand new Air Photo Finder.

While the project is currently running as a pilot, NCAP will be looking to recruit more Digital Connectors in 2025. If you are interested in being involved with this valuable activity, please email Ben Reiss or use our Contact Us page.

 

Ben Reiss, NCAP Collections Manager and Kirsty Haslam, HES Volunteer Development Officer

 

Find out more about the collections the volunteers will be working on

NARA  Directorate of Overseas Surveys