The Society is no stranger to change and continually looks for ways to ensure their survival and growth. Their digital transformation program sets out to transform their entire operations and aims to free the Society of costly and ageing physical and technological infrastructure.
Sector: Genealogy
Founded in 1911, the Society of Genealogists is a charity with a unique purpose – to help people discover their place in history. The Society preserves the records of everyday lives and makes them available to anyone wanting to understand where they have come from grassroots sources, rich data of unlikely origin, and exceptional assets that capture the unfolding, unofficial history of us all.
Challenge
To preserve its rich historical information the Society required a digital scanning partner that would be able to manage their sensitive and often fragile historical documents. The adherence to industry standards for digital output was a major factor in choosing a digitisation partner for such material.
The Society chose to work with Restore Digital due to their ability to handle and scan such documents and provide an outsourced solution that would remove the task from their own teams. The Society are also engaged with other Restore services, including Harrow Green for relocation of artefacts and Records Management for offsite storage
Solution
As the Society has been working through their transformation program, Restore Digital have provided scanning services for several projects to help them transform digitally along the way. These have ranged from scanning admin files to the digitisation of 1.3 million index cards and two larger library book collections, consisting of 1.9 million images from books of Monumental Inscriptions and Parish Registers.
Results
Digitising these records prepared the Society in readiness for their digital content system launch, later in 2022, which will enable members to search and access artefacts online.
The downsizing of our library space, in combination with the fact that the majority of our members live remotely, means that the availability of digital content is more important than ever for the Society. The scanning projects have been vitally important to the Society because it has given our over 7,000 members access to new information digitally, enabling us to offer a better customer experience and service. Working with a partner like Restore also enables our team to focus on engaging with our membership and providing digital assets to family history researchers all over the world I highly recommend working with them.
Christine Worthington | The Society of Genealogists
Key Facts
- 1.3 million Index cards
- 1.9 million images from books
- 7,000 million members given access to new information