Robert Gordon’s College

**Business Process Management** Education

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

With some very rare and valuable historical documents, Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen, Scotland, needed to find a way
to preserve and protect its unique archive.
The College turned to Ricoh and its historical document scanning service to digitise thousands of fragile documents, some
dating back as far as the 1660s.

Executive Summary

Name	Robert Gordon’s College
Location	Aberdeen, Scotland
Size	1,500 pupils
Activity	Education

Challenges

Ensure the history of a 273-year-old school
is kept alive
Eradicate damage threat for extremely
rare documents
Make delicate and fragile artifacts
more accessible

Solution

Ricoh Business Process Management
Document digitisation and management
Microform, heritage digitisation specialists

Benefits

Protects and extends the life of priceless historical documents
Delivers a fast, safe and high-quality digitisation process
Enables a dramatic cut in time
to search archives
Information retrieval now minutes
rather than weeks
Makes unique records accessible
to more people
Produces high-quality digital documents compared to photographic reproduction

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

Challenges

On 16 April 1663, Arthur Gordon and Isobell Menzies drew up what could be the world’s first pre-nuptial agreement. The original document, handwritten on parchment paper, is the oldest artifact among thousands of historical documents that make up a unique archive belonging to Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen.

Robert Gordon’s College is an independent co-educational school for children aged 3 to 18 years. It was founded in 1750 by Arthur and Isobell’s son Robert Gordon, a merchant who traded from Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland and used his wealth to set up a school to educate the sons of poor merchants. Over 270 years later, the College has 1,500 pupils and occupies over 39 acres of learning and sports facilities in and around Aberdeen.

The archive, comprising some 3,000 highly valuable, fragile and irreplaceable documents, is a testament to the College’s rich history which the College wants to preserve. It contains documents which trace not only the development of primary, secondary and tertiary education in Aberdeen but also important local and national events and, as such, complements the archives of the city and shire. The main school, for instance, includes the Auld Hoose, built in 1732 which was used by the Duke of Cumberland in 1746 during his campaign against Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites.

The archive includes a huge range of items: from the Minutes of Governors’ meetings dating back to 1731, pupil information, accounts, architectural plans, school magazines and photographs, along with other items such as furniture and artworks.

Other items include Robert Gordon’s substantial coin collection and his extensive collection of engravings.

The archive is also a living information resource. The College receives regular requests for information from former pupils requesting confirmation of examination results, staff

members, and members of the public carrying out family history research online - which means manually searching through hundreds of documents. Tom Cumming, a former teacher at the College for 33 years, manages the archive.

Although the documents are stored securely and protected from the environment, handling the documents to find information still risks damage, simply through wear and tear and exposure to the elements. Information searches are manual and can take weeks since content is not catalogued and handling delicate documents cannot be rushed.

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

Solution

As well as preserving the archive, the College was also keen to make them more accessible for example by uploading them to the College website. Cumming was tasked with finding a partner to digitise the archive documents.

One option was to do the job in-house, but the College has neither the expertise nor the equipment. After looking at several providers, Cumming and the College decided to award the contract to Ricoh – the existing print supplier - and Ricoh’s business partner Microform, a specialist in historical document archiving.

“We wanted a partner that could give us the best advice on document preservation and offer a simple, frills-free solution that was easy to use. What reassured us about Ricoh was right from the beginning there was a clear strategy, and we knew exactly how the project would run from collection and processing to safe return of the documents,” says Cumming.

As well as the timesaving and efficiency benefit of the Ricoh solution, I believe it improves the perception people have about the College both internally as well as externally. It shows that Robert Gordon’s College is helpful, organised, quick and responsive and conveys a professional business-like impression. That is important for the College.

Tom Cumming,
Archive Manager, Robert Gordon’s College

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

The College was impressed with the knowledge and expertise of Ricoh and Microform. They explained in detail what type of scanning equipment would be used and how they would tackle complex processes such as digitising each page in a fragile leather-bound book without damaging its delicate binding. It is held in a V-shaped cradle and each page scanned at an angle.

A substantial number of the principal documents in the archive have been digitised and uploaded to the College’s cloud storage platform. The College is planning to make some of the digital files accessible online. Some of the documents can already be seen on the College’s web-based Interactive Timeline.

The document archive is the corporate memory of Robert Gordon’s College, and it is essential that we preserve and protect that memory. Of course, the originals are invaluable to the College and as historical documents in their own right. But with the Ricoh solution, information is accessed quickly and efficiently without having to thumb through what are some very fragile and delicate artifacts.

Tom Cumming,
Archive Manager, Robert Gordon’s College

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

“The document archive is the corporate memory of Robert Gordon’s College, and it is essential that we preserve and protect that memory,” says Cumming. “Of course, the originals are invaluable to the College and as historical documents in their own right. But with the Ricoh solution, information is accessed quickly and efficiently without having to thumb through what are some very fragile and delicate artifacts.”

Cumming says, “Searching through the archives with only a name or a date was a needle in a haystack situation. Now, because the documents are digital, we can find a piece of information almost instantly. This has been a big time saver. We can search by any related reference like name, date, resignation or appointment and quickly find the information we need.”

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

Further time is saved since Cumming can copy and paste information instead of having to retype it. Digitising documents improves the quality of the documents significantly, compared to photographs.

“As well as the timesaving and efficiency benefit of the Ricoh solution, I believe it improves the perception people have about the College both internally as well as externally.

It shows that Robert Gordon’s College is helpful, organised, quick and responsive and conveys a professional business-like impression. That is important for the College,” says Cumming.

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

Benefits

Searchability is one of the key benefits of the digital archive, considering the College receives 10-12 information requests a month and some requests used to take weeks to complete.

Now searching for information – which is a free service for the requestor - is faster and easier, especially since information requests often come with little contextual information. For example, on one occasion the Archivist was endeavouring to identify when the College acquired the portrait of a former pupil, an army captain who died in the First World War. An extensive manual search through school records failed and only a chance mention in a newspaper record revealed the date as 1965.

Case Study | Robert Gordon’s College

We wanted a partner that could give us the best advice on document preservation and offer a simple, frills-free solution that was easy to use. What reassured us about Ricoh was right from the beginning there was a clear strategy, and we knew exactly how the project would run from collection and processing to safe return of the documents.

Tom Cumming,
Archive Manager, Robert Gordon’s College

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