Scanning & Assembling Individual Documents

Documents and photographs from the archives are being scanned and saved in 'jpg' format (Joint Photographic experts Group). Collections of images and 'Microsoft Word' documents are then being assembled into the Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf). The pdf format has been chosen:

  o As it is a de facto industry standard with a free reader,
  o For simplified document accessibility and management:
      a) Navigation with thumbnails of pages,
      b) Viewing with variable magnification of images,
      c) Flexible printing of selected pages,
      d) Straightforward export of imported images.

The first page in each Adobe pdf document is a cover page in a standard format which contains (as appropriate):

   a) Document title,
   b) Document author,
   c) Abstract of the document,
   d) Contact details for more information,
   e) Copyright information,
   f) A unique document reference number.

A printed copy of the cover page for each Adobe pdf document prepared is assembled with the original hardcopy pages which were scanned to make up the document. This is intended to simplify reference to and organisation of the original material.

Hard Disc Version

The collection of Adobe pdf files which make up the electronic archives is assembled into a series of folders on hard disc. To simplify indexing and access to these files, a website style structure has been created. Summary information and indexes facilitate identification and navigation to particular documents of interest which can be opened, viewed & printed as required. The website style structure incorporates a page for each pdf document which contains relevant details extracted from the cover page (title, abstract, document id etc).

Archives on CD ROM

Initially, the hard disc version of the archives can be made available simply by copying it onto a single CD ROM. However, as more documents are assembled into the electronic archives, they will increase in size to several gigabytes. This is more than can be accommodated on a single CD ROM.

In order to deal with this, the pdf documents are divided up across the requisite number of CD ROMs - with the website style indexing structure duplicated on all the CDs. In this way, summary details of all the documents available in the electronic archives can be found on any CD. However, to display a particular pdf document requires insertion of the appropriate CD.

Website - www.penleyradararchives.org.uk

The website / index part of the Penley Radar Archives is published on the World Wide Web. With suitable search engine registration, this will enable researchers to become aware of the existence of these archives, and to review summary details of all the documents available electronically.

Many of the documents which make up the electronic version of the archives mainly consist of scanned images - which makes for large file sizes (tens of megabytes).  For reasons of this size and to manage access, few (if any) of the full pdf documents will be directly accessible on-line. Instead, the website provides details of how to go about obtaining or viewing those documents of interest.

Evolution of the Archives - Version Numbers

Over time, it is expected that more documents will be added to the electronic archives. From time to time a new version of the archives will be made available as a set of CDs. Each version (and each CD within that version) will be allocated a unique identifier.

With each new version the website proper (World Wide Web) will be updated - with the version number displayed at the bottom of each web page. Document identifiers for individual documents will however remain unchanged (unless the document itself has changed).