Local Government - Cemeteries Department
Case Study Two
DIGITISATION, TRANSCRIPTION AND ONLINE SEARCHES OF CEMETERY RECORDS
PROJECT BACKGROUND
This London Council had 39 Grave Registers and Indexes for 2
Cemeteries. The books record more than 80,000 deceased
records dating back to the 1800’s.
With only the most recent 10 years available to view via their
BACAS administration system, performing family and
genealogy searches on historic records was an expensive, slow
and manual process of trying to locate the records within the
39 books.
REQUIREMENTS
1. DIGITISATION: With only one copy of the books it was
imperative that they were scanned in order that a backup could
be made. The original books could then be placed somewhere
safe - ensuring no more handling and deterioration of them.
2. DATA CAPTURE: Capturing the records within the books
and linking this database to the scanned pages would enable
staff to do ‘fast’ searches.
3. ONLINE: Taking the database and placing it online would
enable the public to perform searches and thus free up valuable
staff time. Obviously it also meant that E-government
guidelines and the rules regarding the Freedom of Information
Act could be closely adhered to too.
THE PROJECT
1. DIGITISATION OF 39 REGISTERS.
Council staff use their Cemetery Books on a daily basis and so
did not want their books to leave their offices. TownsWeb
Archiving were happy to send staff and equipment to their
Offices in order to scan all of the pages within all of their
Registers. All of the images were supplied at 300dpi in tiff and
jpeg formats on one plug-and-play external hard-drive.
‘Virtual’ Book Viewing software was also supplied to allow
pages to be turned, printed and faxed. The software also allows
parts of the pages to be selected, copied and pasted in to other
applications such as Microsoft Word or Outlook - great when
sending information in response to genealogy enquiries.
2. DATA CAPTURE OF 80,000 RECORDS.
Typing the records within the books and linking them to the
scanned pages would enable the staff to perform fast searches.
Previously the ability to accurately type old, hand-written
records was thought to be too difficult, however, TownsWeb
Archiving have many years experience of capturing difficult to
read records and guarantee at least 95% accuracy. Also - the
cost of typing such a high number of records was always thought to be too prohibitive. However, because TownsWeb
Archiving ‘link’ the records to the scanned pages via the
‘Virtual’ Book Viewing software, only key search fields needed
to be captured which make the costs significantly cheaper.
3. ALLOWING THE PUBLIC TO SEARCH THE
RECORDS.
Once the records had been typed and then linked through to the
scanned pages then it was a simple process to place the records
online. TownsWeb Archiving designed and developed web
pages and a user friendly search engine to allow the public to
quickly access the records and download the scanned pages.
TownsWeb Archiving worked with the Council’s I.T. staff and
the records are now LIVE on the Internet...
ADDITIONAL ITEMS
CEMETERY MAPS
The Council had only one copy of their 45 hand-drawn
cemetery maps and so they asked TownsWeb Archiving to
provide printed, laminated copies of them.
ADDITIONAL BACKUP-DRIVES
The Council wanted to ensure that they had duplicate copies of
their data in order to ensure that they could recover from any
possible data loss. TownsWeb Archiving were happy to retain
a copy of the data and also supplied 3 additional external
hard-drives containing all of their data and applicable software.
COUNCIL’S COMMENTS...
“TownsWeb Archiving are a highly professional and friendly
company. We told them what we wanted to achieve and they
put forward an action plan to meet our needs.”
“Their ability to scan the records on site meant there was no
disruption to the service. All the work was completed on time,
within budget and to the highest standard.”
“We will certainly use them again in the future and recommend
them to others”
TownsWeb Archiving Ltd can be contacted on
01536 713834 or on the web at
www.townswebarchiving.com or via email at
enquiries@townswebarchiving.com.
