Newcastle University had a large quantity of archived student information held on microfiche. Given the sensitive nature of much of the information and its value to the university, it was held in several large, fire proof safes. Former students frequently request proofs of their study and qualifications so the microfiche records were accessed regularly.

When a request was made for information from the archive it was the start of a cumbersome and laborious process. Also, the university was relocating its student services and thus required an efficient and environmentally friendly way of managing the information held on the microfiche. Digitisation was the obvious answer and ndata was contracted to undertake this. Individual images digitised from each microfiche were collated to produce one multipage PDF file per microfiche, named as per the student’s name. In total, over 120,000 microfiche containing nearly 2 million pages were digitised.

Whilst the project was in progress the university required continuous access to the microfiche to meet their service standards to graduates. ndata provided a ‘scan on demand’ service, undertaking to locate a microfiche, scan it, and email the information back to the university within 1 day of receiving a request.

The PDF files are now stored on a confidential share folder in A-Z order.  Key staff can access the files easily and quickly, electronically searching by surname or letter combinations if they need to. Overall, there has been a major saving in time taken to prepare documents for graduates and service standards have improved.  In addition, the management costs associated with the microfiche have been eliminated and the space previously occupied by the safes has been reclaimed.