Society of Radiographers create diploma results archive
The Society of Radiographers, based in the London Borough of Southwark, is responsible for, amongst other things, maintaining records of qualified radiographers.
Valerie Asemah is the Society's Administration Secretary and one of her tasks is to fulfil requests from individual radiographers and prospective employers for transcripts of radiographers’ diploma results. The service is chargeable for non-members and free for members. The number of requests varies from one a week to, sometimes, one a day.
These important historical records were kept in a stationery cupboard and Valerie was concerned that they were at risk from fire or flood. The records were kept in very large loose leafed books, each containing between four and six years’ of diploma results. Although much of the information is typed, most of the results prior to 1950 are handwritten. When a transcript request was received, either Valerie or her assistant, Jane, had to lift these heavy archives and laboriously search for the information required before preparing the transcript to be sent to the request source.
Valerie took this problem to Rodney Cattell, Facilities Manager and suggested to him that one solution would, perhaps, be to scan the information and store it on electronic media. Rodney found Preview; Neil Williams, the FD, approved the expenditure and scanning began
The records were indexed by surname, year and examination centre making retrieval of the information extremely fast and efficient. No more lifting of the heavy books for Valerie who told Preview, “It’s brilliant, so much easier and the information is now very easily accessible. When I had to find the records manually, it could take me up to three hours depending on how many times the radiographer took and re-took the examinations. With the data all now held electronically, it can take me as little as two minutes which makes a huge difference to my time management.”
Preview collected all the archive data covering radiographers’ diploma results from 1950 to 1996 when the diploma became a three year degree course. Once scanned, Preview delivered the beautiful old books back to the Society of Radiographers two weeks later and then provided the scanned images to Valerie on the media of choice, CD ROM.
Society of Radiographers web site: http://www.sor.org
So, if you have an archive of valuable or historical records, why not scan them? You can save time and money, find information when you need it and at the same time preserve and protect the original source documents.
Call Preview Services on 020 8755 5710 or complete an Information Request form
