MANCHESTER — Assigned the task of creating 21st-century digital images of pages from books written in the 1700s, employees at Morgan Records Management in Manchester took a unique approach. Combine old-school methods with state-of-the-art technology, and historical texts are suddenly available to modern-day students, whenever and wherever they need to access them.

“We got a kick out of it when we were doing it,” said Dan Fawcett, vice president of sales and marketing for Morgan Records Management. “It's old school meets new school, old tech meets new tech, with some creativity thrown in.”

Morgan Records Management, a document storage company, also offers document imaging and scanning services. Fawcett said his firm was contacted by representatives from Westford Academy in Westford, Mass., about digitizing several books authored by the founders of the school. The books were written during the 1700s, and available to students, faculty and others only in the school library.

“They were looking to make the books more available,” Fawcett said. “These books weren't accessible. They weren't available to the students. They were locked away in a vault, but they've always wanted to make them available to students and faculty. Now anyone can go online and access them, to learn about how their school started, the founders ... all the history of the school.”

Fawcett said Morgan Records had successfully digitized documents and books for several firms in the past, but it quickly became apparent to everyone involved that this job was going to be different. The books they would be digitizing were written in the 1700s, and school officials put certain restrictions on how the material could be handled.

“Most of the books, you couldn't open them past a 90-degree angle,” Fawcett said. “That was a requirement of the job. You couldn't just flip these open and slap them on a scanner.”

Scott Spaulding, an information technology support technician at Morgan Records, began looking at the project, brainstorming several solutions to produce clear, digital images of the pages, without damaging the books in any way.

Spaulding devised a cradle, which the book rested in with open pages facing up. To prepare each page to be digitized, a piece of museum display glass is placed on the paper, which flattens it out while providing a clear-view of the handwritten text. Nearby is a single light bulb on a pole, along with a digital camera atop a tripod.

A simple solution for a complex problem.

“We had to get creative here, with building a holder that would adjust, and also the camera on the tripod,” Spaulding said. “We developed the holder, put the book in the cradle, then shot each page from an angle. A lot was done post-production in Photoshop. It was a lot of handwork, flipping the page, take the picture, shoot the next one, flip the page, and so on.”

“Each book took maybe six to eight hours to actually get all the images, sort them and get them right in the system, and then there was additional time beyond that to clean everything up,” Spaulding said. “It was a long project. Initially it was supposed to be 4,000 images and four to five books. It ended up being close to 18,000 images and 30 books.”

“It just grew on us,” Fawcett said. “They liked what we were doing and said, 'Here, take it all.' We had to get creative, and the images really came out spectacular.”

“We had to make the system up as we were doing it,” Spaulding said. “We found this was the best way to do it, the best way to get the job done. It takes a little longer, but the end results speak for themselves.”

Charles Morgan, owner and founder of Morgan Storage and Morgan Records Management, feels the process his team developed will open the doors to new document digitizing opportunities for other schools and libraries — but still feels the best way to preserve information is to store documents. A warehouse located at the Morgan Records site has rows and rows of files his firm stores for clients ranging from lawyers to doctors.

“No matter what happens to a computer, the only place in the universe where that information sits is right here,” Morgan said. “This is a better way of doing it. There's something really nice about an original piece of paper, with an original seal on it.”

Fawcett thinks other organizations will approach Morgan Records soon about digitizing older manuscripts and books.

“Some schools are willing to take some damage to books for the sake of getting them converted, but that really wasn't on the table for them,” Fawcett said. “There's not really anyone around here that's doing this, or doing it this way. It wasn't the easiest solution, but it was the best one for this project.”

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Paul Feely may be reached at pfeely@unionleader.com.