The Client
Louth County Archive Services is a repository for the public and private archives of County Louth. It collects and makes available the public archives of the county’s local government and also the private archives that document the history and development of the county, such as those of individuals, organisations, clubs, societies, businesses, landed estates and national schools.
The Problem
To improve access to and to help preserve these historical collections, the archives decided to digitally capture some of its most important collections. One of these was the Grand Jury Query Books collection.
What We Did
The grand Jury Query Books collection consisted of 39 volumes of differing sizes. The collection dated from 1810 and ranged in size from 130mm x 210mm book pages to 250mm x 360mm.
Each volume was captured and presented in folio format at 300dpi preservation master TIFF. The preservation master image was passed through our OCR with an accuracy output exceeding 97% and a derivative book format PDF was created with a separate, fully searchable layer embedded for presentation on the internet.
The Benefits
- The collection has been protected from any future damage that may have been caused through excessive handling
- A digital backup has been created ensuring there will always remain a permanent record of the collection
- Access to the collection content is now easier and faster
- Multiple researchers can access the volume’s content at the same time