Borders Family History Society logoPrinting frustration alleviated

Client

Borders Family History Society (BFHS) helps people with their family history, primarily in the Border counties of Scotland and in adjacent counties of England and Scotland. Society meetings are held in different locations around the Scottish Borders, this year in Melrose, Kelso, Foulden, Selkirk, Denholm.

The challenge

Using the scanner

BFHS user enjoying the improved scanning facilities

Family documents such as birth and death certificates are often stored on microfilm. The Society have a Canon microfilm scanner that was able to print images via an attached printer. Formerly this was done via a PC, to which a printer was attached via a parallel printer cable - but when the PC died they weren't able to establish a working connection using another PC. The Canon support team wasn't able to help over the phone; nothing that they suggested actually worked.

Our help

John McKenna contacted BFHS, interested in the challenge of providing a solution to the Society's printing problem. John, who has nine years of experience working in the IT industry, spent three hours on site testing the SCSI card connection, installing Cute PDF software and demonstrating how to produce PDFs of scanned microfilm images. He also disconnected an existing printer and connected it to the scanner's PC and showed that images could be printed in the correct format. John spent three hours travelling to and from his home in North Lanarkshire, plus additional time researching drivers and other software on the internet before his visit.

The results

  • A microfilm scanner that can print to printer and print to PDF
  • Researchers can take away official evidence of their ancestors' births, marriages, and deaths
  • Saves users time, as they don't need to transcribe what is on the screen
  • Money was saved by not having to buy another printer

What our client said

Before John came, he was doubtful that he could rectify the problem in one visit. Not only did he rectify the problem on his first visit, but he offered us different solutions with examples of other things we can do. We're bowled over that we can now print scanned images. I'm very impressed by his expertise.

Peter Munro, Borders Family History Society

30th September 2010