CaseStudy

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 17 No 01 - January/February 2009

Working with unique and irreplaceable documents presented some very unusual challenges to genealogical research services website Findmypast.com

Findmypast.com is a provider of online genealogical research services to both corporate organisations and the general public, containing over 550 million family history records. Findmypast.com (formerly 1837online) was the first organisation to place birth, marriage and death records of England and Wales online, providing public access to indexes which previously were only available at certain locations in England. This gained Findmypast.com the prestigious Queen's Award for Innovation in 2007.

THE CHALLENGE
With over 1.2 million documents containing over 30 million individuals' personal details, the BT27: Board of Trade Outbound Passenger Lists were potentially a treasure trove for family historians seeking to find the journeys their ancestors made (by boat) between 1890 and 1960. However, stored in boxes and indexed by year and port of departure, they were very difficult for members of the public to use. This highlighted a requirement to conserve the original documents.

Findmypast.com - in association with The National Archives - undertook a project to digitise and fully index the records and make them available online. RR Donnelley Global Document Solutions (GDS) was selected to design, implement and run a fully tailored scanning platform, whilst ensuring that the often very fragile documents were not damaged. Once scanned, images were supplied to the customer where they were then fully transcribed, resulting in over 1.6 billion keystrokes generated. Following transcription, all data and images were supplied to the customer to "ready" the information for upload onto

Findmypast.com
The unique elements of this project presented a variety of challenges for

GDS:

.. Security and integrity were paramount as these documents are the only hard copies available in the world

.. Procedures and processes had to be agreed with The National Archives for the handling and general care of these unique and irreplaceable documents

.. The mixture of the document formats and conditions required a robust yet very flexible solution. This was a particular challenge to all parties in that the condition of the documents was unknown until each box was retrieved for production processing

.. Uploading the information in "Decade" order required careful production planning to ensure the work was steady and the dates targeted by them for release were achievable. This was further compounded due to the above issues (of unknown document condition and size)

.. The unknown aspects of both physical papers and items to capture required a flexible and scaleable solution to meet the agreed timescales

Difficulties arose in applying a standard quality approach, due to inconsistencies in handwriting and the format of the data. Again, flexible and very robust quality procedures were needed.

THE SOLUTION
To ensure that the unique elements of the BT27 project were achieved, GDS devised the following tailored solution:

.. An onsite solution, based within The National Archives repository, was designed, ensuring that the environmental and security conditions required for these documents were achieved

.. Extensive document handling training was implemented and consistently monitored during the scanning production to ensure that no further damage was caused. Both GDS and The National Archives implemented robust manifest and foliation processes to ensure all documents provided were returned in the same condition

.. Processes were implemented and continually monitored to ensure all exceptions could be managed

.. This flexible and tailored solution required a mix of specialised equipment to be installed. Careful production control was also implemented, with the assistance of The National Archives foliation team, to ensure a smooth and consistent flow of work

.. Robust and extensive capture rules and procedures were designed and implemented to minimise the impact of any inconsistencies. GDS' expertise of other historic transcription projects was leveraged to tailor the quality processes to identify and rectify any queried elements

.. Standardisation of specific fields, such as destination ports, was incorporated to assist the capture operators, ensuring consistently high accuracy within the data

.. By incorporating GDS' production and operational expertise - and considerable resource - the solution was designed to accommodate significant fluctuations in the "decade" capture, in order to meet the agreed timescales

.. All data transcribed was filtered and quality reviewed through a variety of stages to maximise the accuracy of the data. A strict "key as seen" methodology was applied, ensuring the integrity of the images was maintained - vital to the genealogical market

THE RESULTS
Findmypast.com considered the project a success, with 99.82% accuracy achieved against a contractual target of 94%. The volumes of documents have been accommodated, the mixture and inconsistency in the documents has been carefully and successfully managed and the transcription quality has exceeded the Service Level Agreements.

The image quality produced is of the highest standard available on any genealogical online service and equally importantly, The National Archives are full of praise about the care and treatment of the original documents. Elaine Collins, Commercial Director, Find My Past Ltd., concludes: "RR Donnelley Global Document Solutions has used their expertise to deliver a solution that not only addressed the project's unique elements, but produced the highest standard image quality - something which is not currently available from any other online genealogical service provider". More info: www.rrdgds.com

CaseStudy