For some many years now, we have been active in
the archival of documents, maps, manuscripts and books for clients together with the
design and management of huge databases, and it was decided that in conjunction with a
near-obsession with genealogy, local history, cartography and topography in general, it
was about time we put our skills to some good purpose and start archiving for ourselves.
The main benefit of such work, is that the CD
ROM can be a very acceptable compromise, for these old books are becoming extremely
fragile and any unnecessary wear or mechanical stressing can cause rapid
deterioration, to a point where repair or rebinding is never going to reinstate the work
to its full former glory.
It was considered somewhat self-indulgent just
to preserve a modest number of books for in-house use and the idea of running a
small-scale archival and preservation service of popular books as an adjunct to the normal
"day-job" intended as a non-profitmaking concern - seemed a good idea (at
the time!).
So it was decided to subsidise this operation
so that we can all share these rapidly fading (often literally!) and invaluable research
resources. Obviously the subsidy is extremely high, in time as well as money, but we feel
it is too important to ignore.
Therefore we are actively acquiring or seeking
access to relevant old books, with the intention of producing small runs of specialised
directories, maps etc.
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