Digital studio
Preserve your memories! You can digitize your analogue media yourself in our digital studio.
Devices available
At present, there are devices for digitising the following media:
- Audio cassettes
- Vinyl records
- VHS video tapes
- Photos
- Dias
- Negatives
Video instructions for each device are available (instructions for audio cassettes, instructions for vinyl, instructions for VHS, instructions photos, instructions dias, instructions negatives).
You will find the digital studio, clearly signposted, on the second floor of the reading room. Copiers, scanners and microfilm readers are also available there.
Data storage
Save your data to your personal storage: USB sticks, hard drives or cloud storage. The ZB does not offer any storage space. Instructions on storage options can be found here. You can only buy USB sticks at our information desk (58.5 GB storage space, CHF 13.50).
The files you receive require approximately the following storage space:
medium | file format | approximate file size |
Audio cassettes and Vinyl records | MP3 Wav | 85 MB for 60 minutes 800 MB for 60 minutes |
VHS video tapes | AVI | 13 GB for 60 minutes |
Photos/Dias/Negatives | JPG | from 8 MB per Image |
Further information
Please do not bring any physically damaged cassettes/tapes or mouldy material; they will damage the players.
Digitisation takes place at original speed, so allow enough time for this. As a result, our studio is not suitable for digitising larger archives.
When you have finished digitising your material, please delete your files from our computer with one click.
The ZB is not liable for damage to users’ media.
If you have any questions or would like to request a brief introduction, please contact digitalstudio@zb.uzh.ch. We will get back to you as soon as possible, but please be aware that a same-day reply is not always possible.