BOOK SCANNING FOR THE LISMORE LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY

A COMPLETE MINUTE BOOK DIGITISATION SOLUTION FROM SCAN2ARCHIVE

THE NEED

The Lismore Ladies Benevolent Society is a charitable organisation, described by one of its members as Lismore’s oldest charity. Its minute books run from 1890 through to the present day, one continuous series held in paper form. The Society engaged Scan2Archive to digitise all of them, so that the full run of the record would also exist as a digital copy.

THE CHALLENGE

The scope was every minute book, not a selection. A minutes series is a sequence, and any volume left out of the digitisation stays undigitised. Minutes are not duplicated anywhere else, so nothing skipped could be picked up later from another source.

The Society needed a supplier that would take the whole series at once, keep it in order, and give the books back. It is a charity, not a records office, so the digital copies had to be usable by its own members rather than by a specialist.

The record also has an audience beyond the Society’s current members. The Society has said it intends to offer the books and the digital copies to the Richmond River Historical Society, so the reproduction had to work for a reader who was not there and is not a member.

KEY CHALLENGES

Bound minute books spanning 1890 to the present awaiting digitisation

1. Capturing every minute book in the series, from 1890 to the current volume, with no gap in the sequence

2. Producing digital copies that the Society’s own members, not archivists, could open and read

Original bound volumes packed for return to the client

3. Returning every volume to the Society, since the physical books remain part of the record

USB media supplied with the original bound volumes

4. Supplying the digital copies in a form the Society could pass on together with the books

THE SOLUTION

Scan2Archive was a fit for this work as a digitisation specialist certified to ISO 9001:2015, with book and bound-volume scanning as an established service line and collection capability across Australia. Meeting minutes, ledgers, diaries and historical publications are among the bound materials the business digitises as standard work.

Scan2Archive provided the end-to-end solution which included the following key areas:

  • Project specification. Scan2Archive confirms scope, output format and delivery method with the client before capture begins. What was agreed with the Society is not recorded in the source material.
  • Collection and transport. The business runs a national freight network for collecting materials, with staff who handle archival documents as routine work. How the minute books reached the scanning facility is not recorded.
  • Preparation and handling. Bound volumes are assessed and prepared before capture, under the handling practices Scan2Archive applies to historical publications. What these volumes needed is not recorded.
  • Scanning. Scan2Archive uses purpose-built book scanning equipment for bound material up to A1 in size. The equipment and capture settings used on the Society’s minute books are not recorded.
  • Post processing. Standard post processing covers cropping, splitting, straightening and combining pages into multi-page PDF files. Which of those steps applied here, and the file format delivered, are not recorded.
  • Quality control. Images are checked against the agreed specification before release. What checking was carried out on these volumes is not recorded.
  • Delivery. The digital copies of the minute books were supplied to the Society on USB. A Society member has since described the copies as easy to read.
  • Return of the originals. The physical minute books went back to the Society. It holds both the books and the USB, and has said it intends to offer them to the Richmond River Historical Society.
Flex scanner microfiche and microfilm scanning machine

“The Lismore Ladies Benevolent Society, of which I am a member, engaged Scan2Archive to digitise all our Minute Books, from 1890 to date. We are very impressed with the quality of the copying and are finding them easy to read. The books and the USB with the digital copies will be offered to the Richmond River Historical Society, as part of the record of Lismore’s oldest charity. I recommend Scan2Archive to anyone.”

Adrienne Doust, Member, Lismore Ladies Benevolent Society

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