The Client
Translink is a public corporation responsible for providing public transport across Northern Ireland.
In operation since 1996, Translink operates 12,500 services every day, serving 1.5 million passengers a week and covering 44 million miles a year.
The Problem
Translink held an extensive collection of Deed Archives, acting as the sole evidentiary source of land and property interests and historic deed transactions owned by the company.
Previously, Translink had incurred costs for restoring and replacing historic Title documents that were lost or damaged in a fire in the 1940s. To mitigate against the potential risk of holding a single hard copy set of its records, Translink was seeking to preserve all its title deeds digitally.
What We Did
Mallon was required to collect all files from Translink’s archive in Belfast and securely transport these to our data capture facility in Cookstown. Once they arrived, the files were passed through our secure document check–in process to our climate–controlled file storage area.
As required, files were signed in and out of our storage area and moved to the document preparation section, where they were prepared for the scanning and capture process. All files were captured at 400 dpi to produce high–resolution images.
The project involved the digital capture of over 85,000 deed documents, varying in size from A4 to A0. Any relevant map locations were georeferenced within the deed documents. In addition to the deed documents, over 2,000 Large A0 Key Plans were scanned and georeferenced. The Key Plans contained information on the historic footprint of Northern Ireland’s railways.
Once captured, all document–related imagery were passed through OCR processing, enabling text searches to be conducted on all individual images. Quality Assurance was performed on all captured images to ensure that they matched their original documents.
Once past the Quality Assurance process, the documents were restored to their original state and transferred back to the secure storage area for return to the customer. On completion of the project, we captured over 8 Terabytes of data, comprising Translink’s complete historic property portfolio from the 1840s to the present day. The captured data was delivered to the customer via our secure FTP server for upload into Translink’s custom–built mapping and document software.
The Benefits
· Translink has preserved its historic Title Documents by creating a secure digital backup, ensuring they will never lose access to these important historical records
· Accessing digital records of its archive will allow Translink to improve business planning
· Digital copies of their records will help ensure their lasting integrity for the foreseeable future
· Accessing Title Documents can now be done at the touch of a button, removing the need to search through old and delicate paper records manually
· A secure central location for their documents will improve access to critical information and allow multiple users to access it at the same time
· Text searches can be carried out for keywords or phrases, enabling relevant information to be found quickly and easily
· The historical collection will be preserved and protected from further damage caused by excessive handling