Work/Folium

Folium

A venture that helps libraries, museums and archives get their collections read.

folium-studio.com

Folium helps libraries, museums and archives turn a digitised collection into one that people read, search and cite.

Most digitised collections stop at the scan, which only serves a reader who already knows the language and the script. Folium grew out of the work on Source Library and the Embassy of the Free Mind.

Studio venture

Our own venture, in partnership with Playpower Labs

Services

Product strategy

Brand & identity

UX / UI design

Web development

Collection publishing

Visit live site

What an institution gains

Expertise that reaches the whole collection

The people who know a collection can only describe so much of it by hand. With Folium, machines draft the first pass for every volume, and the institution's own scholars and curators check and correct it, so their knowledge reaches all of it. Teaching, public programmes and independent research then have far more to draw on.

A rare book lying open at a fold-out engraving, from the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica.

Your collection, open to far more people than could ever visit it.

A small start

See it working on your own books first

Every project begins with a small sample of the institution's own collection, awkward items included, published properly. The decision about the rest is made with their own books on screen. The film follows one of them.