THE FIRST OF ITS KIND
Another Council (Local Studies Centre) has just completed a unique 'Heritage Lottery-funded' project.
It is the first and only project of its kind in the UK and included the microfilming and digitising of all Parish Registers, covering several large towns and adjacent villages.
The project has taken 14 months to complete and digital capture, 'quality control' and image conversion (for both quality and web publication) was managed by JAK Computing.
The same Council has since commissioned other smaller 'imaging' projects for video to DVD conversion and '8mm Cine' film digitisation.
PRESERVING HISTORY
A Council library wished to provide historic documents via the web, CD and other media. Some needed to be scanned at very high resolution (800dpi), in full colour and without quality loss through compression.
The work involved scanning, cropping, quality control and indexing for retrieval. In addition, some postcards were printed using a process called 'halftone' and this had to be allowed for in the scanning process to avoid interference patterns (moire) being visible at different levels of enlargement.
To date, more than 2,500 cards and photos have been prepared to the required standard and more are scheduled for next year.
PREVENTING FURTHER DAMAGE
The customer needed to maintain an archive of construction drawings relating to their premises. The drawings were kept in a loft and needed to be made more accessible and stored electronically. They had originally been printed on thick 'tracing' paper, then tightly rolled. Every time that a drawing was unrolled for viewing or copying, its condition deteriorated. Attempts to scan the drawings had added to the damage.
The solution was to microfilm the drawings (non-contact process) then scan the microfilm into digital images, converted into the required size, format etc. To aid retrieval electronically, an MS-ACCESS database was provided that allowed immediate viewing of any chosen drawing.
REPLACING PAPER FILES WITH CD-ROM
Solicitors
We were asked to convert all completed Client Files and make them accessible from a PC using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques to enable any file to be accessed from a personal computer. The project started in March 2002. Currently about 80,000 pages are being scanned each month.
The client is a busy practice with five offices in East Hertfordshire. The firm wanted to improve the way in which they archived client matters to enable secure storage and ease of retrieval. As with many similar firms of solicitors, they had previously used large amounts of space to store massive amounts of paper. Not only was this expensive but it meant that obtaining information about past casework was slow and inefficient.
The Practice Manager, said "We were looking for an effective means of storing closed client files that was confidential but also easily accessible for the Partners. The keyword search facility offered by the system software enables files to be found quickly. Once located, we can scroll through the electronic files and print some or all pages as required. This solution has made our document retrieval quicker and cheaper and has revolutionized our archiving facilities. As an added bonus, the skill, care and professionalism of the supplier’s staff has helped the transition from paper to digital storage go very well. The new system has worked so well at our Bishop’s Stortford office that we have now introduced it to three other branches"
The supplier’s Marketing Director, said “We are delighted to be working with four branches of the firm and we hope to be in a position to provide a similar service to the remaining office in the future. We recently reached the 6,000,000th scanned page milestone for the Bishop’s Stortford office.”
Accountants
We were asked to convert all completed Client Files and make them accessible from a PC using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques to enable any file to be accessed from a personal computer. The project started in October 2005 and over 600,000 pages have already been processed.
Pawley and Malyon are a firm of Chartered Accountants and Registered Auditors situated in the West End of London. They have been established for over 75 years. They have a broad range of clients, both corporate and personal, at locations throughout the U.K. Their staff are highly trained, allowing services to be tailored to meet a wide variety of requirements. As a relatively small firm, each of the four partners is able to give that personal service so often lacking in business these days.
Partner, David Malyon, said "Our philosophy is to provide a top quality service in a cost-effective manner. As part of this strategy we were looking for a means of storing closed client files that was confidential but also easily accessible for staff so that client queries could be dealt with quickly and effectively. The keyword search facility offered by the supplier’s software enables files to be found quickly and, once located, we can scroll through the electronic files and print some or all pages as required. This solution has made our document retrieval quicker and cheaper, has revolutionized our archiving facilities and enabled us to focus on what really matters – our clients”.
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