inskannningen

Inskannningen is a term used in Swedish and Norwegian to describe the process of converting physical material into digital form by scanning. The term covers the end-to-end workflow from preparation of originals, through image capture, to storage and retrieval in digital systems. In cultural heritage institutions, offices, and publishers it is a central part of digitization programs aimed at preservation, access, and searchability.

Core steps include preparation and handling of originals to avoid damage, selecting appropriate scanning settings (resolution, color depth, file format), performing image processing (deskew, crop, denoise, color correction) and applying optical character recognition to make text searchable. The resulting digital files are typically stored with associated metadata and preserved in long-term archives using formats such as TIFF or PDF/A, often accompanied by metadata standards (for example Dublin Core, PREMIS) and integrated into a digital asset management or archiving system. Quality control and provenance tracking are common parts of the workflow.

Historically, inskannningen gained prominence with the expansion of digital libraries and records management in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, driven by the need to preserve fragile documents and improve access. Variants of the workflow may emphasize batch processing, automated quality checks, or automated metadata extraction via OCR and AI-assisted indexing.