Document Scanning & Digitization
Paper, film and drawings, scanned, indexed and searchable.
Paper and film are slow to search
A filing room, a microfiche cabinet and a rack of drawing tubes hold the same problem. The information is not lost, but it is unreachable. To find one drawing can take an afternoon, and it takes that afternoon each time somebody needs it.
We scan documents, drawings and film in Calgary, index the output to your naming scheme, and return files that open on any screen and answer a search.
Film readers are no longer manufactured
Microfilm and microfiche were made to last, and the film frequently outlives the machine that reads it. Reader-printers are out of production, spare parts come from other broken machines, and acetate film degrades independently of the reader.
This is the same condition as legacy tape. Move the content while the equipment that reads it still operates.
Shipping
Most material comes from Western Canada, because that is where our clients are. You can ship or courier material to Calgary from any country.
Material we scan
Three material types, one delivery. Most jobs include all three.
-
Microfilm, microfiche and roll film
Full cabinets of fiche, and reels that nobody has spooled in twenty years. We scan the frames, divide them into documents instead of one continuous roll, and run OCR so that the text on the film becomes searchable text.
-
Large-format drawings and maps
Material too wide for an office scanner: engineering drawings, site plans, survey maps, seismic sections and well logs. We scan the sheets flat, so that a rolled or folded original does not return as a distorted image.
-
Documents and OCR
Files, contracts, reports and correspondence. A scan alone gives an image of the page. OCR also gives the words in it. We deliver searchable PDFs.
Clients are not only in the energy industry
Any organization that has operated for decades has a film cabinet or a drawing rack. Law firms, accountants, engineering companies and family businesses already use our storage and catalogue. Scanning is the same service, applied to the paper before it goes into the box.
We developed this work on seismic archives, which are the most difficult case: sections metres long, well logs on brittle paper, and decades of film with no index. The same equipment and the same checks apply to a cabinet of municipal records or a room of engineering drawings.
Steps in a scanning job
-
Inventory and assess
Ship or courier the material to us, from one box to a full records room. We log each item, examine the condition of the film or paper, and confirm the count and the naming scheme with you before we scan anything.
-
Scan and check
We scan each item on equipment matched to its size and format, then compare the output with the original. We report any item that scans badly instead of passing an unreadable frame as complete.
-
Index and deliver
Files are named, OCR'd and delivered. Originals return to you, go into our secure storage, or go through supervised destruction.
Request a scanning quote
An approximate count of reels, fiche, drawing tubes or banker's boxes is sufficient to quote from. There is no obligation and no charge for the quote.