Old but still relevant, thousands of documents in PMC archive to go digital

“There are around 5,000 record registers that have nearly 25 lakh pages or images. The agency will have to number the pages and tag them, as well as put them in categories as per department and year,” said Parkhi. “Less than 1 per cent of the documents are almost 150 years old and need to be handled properly…,” he added.

The documents will have both pre-printed matter and hand-written content. The PMC will appoint a nodal officer to provide the relevant documents to the agency, along with details such as the name of the document, number of pages, category and page type in a pre-specified format.

The agency will have to take some pre-processing steps, such as dusting files to remove dirt, removing tags, pins, threads, rubberbands, unfolding and flattening the documents to eliminate creases and wrinkles, numbering each page, and rebinding them for future archival purposes.

All these need to be done without affecting the quality of the paper or damaging the file or document.
While digitising maps, the agency will have to do so without any errors, ensuring that the survey number and plot number in the map is captured and saved correctly.

“In case of non-availability of required documents or missing pages, it should be notified to the department of municipal secretary. Continuous assistance from the department… will be given to make required records available,” said Parkhi, adding that if the agency didn’t return the documents in good condition, it would have to pay a fine.

“All documents are to be handled carefully and should be returned to the department as per the entries made in the register mentioned in the pre-scanning phase. Under no condition should the documents be missing, replaced, destroyed or damaged by the service provider during scanning activities. As the records are precious and have legal value, any damage to the documents will attract penalty of Rs 5,000 per page,” said Parkhi.