How to Donate

We are often asked about donating to the work of Harrow Photos, so we thought it was worth writing a bit about it... While we charge for the use of the photos that is a cost to cover our time in locating the photo, scanning it, etc. However the collection is privately owned and there are plenty of costs and no external funding. The current plan is:

Stage 1 - Store the collection. The collection needed to leave Harrow School, so finding a new home for it was a priority. This home has now been secured and the collection has somewhere to live.

Stage 2 - Preserve the collection. The collection, estimated at 50,000 - 80,000 glass plates has only 13,500 which have been archivally preserved. It is necessary to purchase archival boxes and sleeves for the remaining 35,000 - 65,000 images.

Stage 3 - Order & Index the archive. There is an index of around 35,000 images already computerised and on this website. However, a large percentage of the photos do have identifying descriptions so there needs to be an exercise to expand the index. In addition, the collection was originally stored in such a way as to have certain logic, but not complete in its order, however the relocation of the collection has generally disordered any such logic and therefore some simple ordering will help in finding images...

Stage 4 - Scanning. The 13,500 images which have been archived have also been scanned and can be found as watermarked thumbnails on this site. This was due to a number of years work by the archive staff at Harrow School. However, there is considerably more work to be done. A part of the preservation of archival material in today's world is to scan material so that it is preserved both physically and electronically. This is a huge task, and while photos will be scanned individually where there is a requirement, ultimately, to scan all photos would be ideal.

It is estimated that it will cost between £3 and £5 per image to archive, sort, scan, preserve each slide. That doesn't sound a lot of money, however, when the sums are done, at the lower end of the estimate (36,500 more photos @ £3 ea.) there is a likely bill of c. £110,000. At the upper end, (66,500 more images @ £5 ea.) c. £330,000. Either way, that is a lot of money to spend! However archiving is not cheap and this is a unique collection of an area across a period of 100 years, ultimately that is not an expensive price either...

So, a donation of £3 - £5 per photo you are interested in helps do your little bit towards ensuring that another photo is preserved, it is possible that the photo of interest is already scanned and archived, so why not contribute towards the protection of another one? Your help is really appreciated.