Historical Document Digitization: Planning and Execution

If you have ever looked out for the Declaration of Independence in an online collection like the one issued by the National Archives, then you must have noticed that you are allowed to click on it, zoom in to the document, and even study the document in detail. Moreover, in case the document has been through the Optical Character Recognition process (OCR), you can search for that particular document for whole phrases or keywords. 

This is because these historical documents are being digitized, and there are many components that are involved in the document digitization process. This goes without saying that historical documents are highly valuable and are generally irreplaceable. It involves old printed copies, ancient handwritten texts, architectural drawings in the city, business archives, and even engineering drawings that are required to be preserved. 

Given the fact that precious and ancient texts are required to be preserved and protected, it is a tough job to allow them to circulate and allow students, researchers, or concerned institutions to gain access to a huge amount of historical information and knowledge. Any damage to these historical documents can lead to the loss of valuable information they contain. 

Document digitization services are required in order to ensure that the books and historical documents are preserved and stored on digital servers. The first step in preserving these historical documents is to scan all the paper documents and convert them into their digital counterparts.

In this article, let’s talk about how the digitization of historical documents is planned and executed. 

Why There Arises a Need for Historical Documents Digitization

Hard copies of historical documents tend to deteriorate with every use. Paper documents are extremely fragile, and handling books and historical documents is a process that is required to be done carefully. The digitization workspace should be free of any dirt, dust, or other contaminants. 

Some archival tools might be necessary, specifically if the project demands working with old documents that are damaged or brittle. Archival spatulas are capable of securing books in a cradle scanner. Additionally, tweezers might help in the removal of any adhesives before scanning. 

Government bodies are able to maintain old records, such as marriage documents, birth certificates, death certificates, maps, and land records, in long-term storage areas. However, it becomes a challenge in itself to gain access to those documents, and it is not considered a feasible option too. 

Thus, this makes digitizing those archives the only method of conducting research and gaining access to the documents. Dox and Box provide documents scanning or digital imaging services to carry out the transformation of paper records into digital files. These files are easy to preserve and gain access to. 

How Historical Documents Digitization is Planned and Executed

Your first step when you think about digitizing a historical document must be getting in touch with a firm that offers the top document scanning services in Gurgaon. Dox and Box is the leading firm that offers top document scanning and digitization services that are tailored to your requirements.

The documents scanning process incorporated by Dox and Box is highly efficient and secure, and it involves some basic processes, which are:

• Collecting the requirements and objectives of the project
• Picking up and ensuring the safe transportation of documents to us or allowing s to set up our high-quality scanners and operators at your site
• Preparing documents for scanning 
• Ensuring the repair of any damaged documents
• Scanning documents and carrying out image enhancement
• ICR/OCR for carrying out the indexing and classification procedure
• Formatting the data in accordance with your output specifications

When you have the gathered information, you are required to make a decision related to the cleanup of documents. It’s your choice whether you want the documents to go through a cleanup process. At Dox and Box, our experts carefully study all the documents from top to bottom, and once all the flaws are documented, we have some restoration options up our sleeves. 

Optical Character Recognition acts as the meat of how information is digitized. If you want to make sure that each and every word is exactly replicated in the digital format, you will require all the documents to go through a simple OCR verification pass.