The Client
The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) is an innovative international organisation for electronics, electrical, manufacturing and IT professionals, with specifically tailored products, services and qualifications to meet the needs of today's technology industry.

Founded in 1871, the IEE is the largest professional engineering society in Europe and has a worldwide membership of just under 130,000, ranging from students to the most distinguished and highly qualified members of the profession.

The Challenge
Until now, 146 volumes of scientific abstracts from the IEE archive (1898 to 1968) have only been available in print with the associated limits on accessibility. Alden assisted IEE in digitising this whole collection, both to preserve it and give it the enhanced value that online access can bring. An XML archival backfile to the database was to be produced comprising over 800,000 records that would supplement the 7 million records already available in the online medium, and was required to be available to customers by Spring 2004.

The Solution
Alden had the books freighted to their office in Chennai, India, where the entire digitisation process took place during an agreed 20-week schedule. As there was no need to return the paper material back to IEE, the pages were extracted from the books and were individually scanned, read using optical character recognition software, rekeyed where necessary, and put through a rigorous proofing process.

Alden has always prided itself on its technological innovations and using the software development teams in India was able to produce custom software products to enable as much automation and ensure levels of quality throughout the entire process.

Upon passing the text quality checks, the data was structured into IEE’s XML using custom software. The main abstract text was then given extra value by cross-referencing from the indices of each volume and also between abstracts.

Alden’s own XML parsing software, Xassist, in addition to XML stylesheets and bespoke validation programs, was used to ensure the standard of the structure and content of the files. Graphics were processed where required, including redraws, and linked to the relevant abstract. The customer then received XML files, graphics and PDF images of the issues, which were made available via Alden’s UK FTP site.

The strict requirements for this project meant the chosen supplier needed to be flexible, be able to focus resources efficiently, have solid procedural working practices and bullet-proof disaster recovery plans, and be well-versed in the production of structured data and associated software development. As an ISO 9002 company with over 10 years experience in this field of data processing, Alden Prepress Services met and exceeded these requirements.