2026-11-11
Boxes seen from above: two with black bound volumes with yellow paper markers in the edges, on one of them lies a white cover with the city coat of arms and the text Kommunfullmäktige i Helsingborg, Protokoll Handlingar nr 1-25 1978; to the right archive boxes and a yellowed booklet titled Sakregister över Helsingborgs Stadsfullmäktiges Förhandlingar 1863–1882
The council records in place with us in Kågeröd — bound volumes in their boxes, in the middle the cover of Kommunfullmäktige i Helsingborg, Protokoll och handlingar nr 1–25 1978 (municipal council minutes and documents), and on the right the oldest booklet: Sakregister över Helsingborgs stadsfullmäktiges förhandlingar 1863–1882 (subject index to the city council's proceedings)

I have been commissioned to digitise Helsingborg's printed council records for Helsingborg City Archives. The assignment covers 38 volumes and booklets with around 33,000 pages: the municipal council's minutes, documents, budgets and indexes from 1971 to 1997, plus three older subject indexes to the city council's proceedings for the years 1863–1914.

The volumes from 1971–1997 are cut open at the spine and the pages are fed as loose sheets through our Inotec Scamax 6x1 at 600 dpi in colour. The oldest booklet — the subject index for 1863–1882 — is instead scanned gently on our overhead scanner, the Image Access Bookeye 5 V1 Archive, because its pages are too brittle to be fed. The pages are not cropped — the edges are instead filled in with the paper's own tone — and I go through the straightening of the pages by hand. The records also contain fold-out appendices in A3 format and larger, including maps and town plans; the longest is almost 80 cm.

After scanning, the text is run through OCR in Swedish, so that every page becomes searchable. The OCR text is left uncorrected.

Each volume is then divided according to the city archives' own inventory: one PDF document per set of minutes, document, budget and index — more than a thousand files in all — and in addition the whole volume as a single PDF. The files are delivered as archival PDF/A-2b at 300 dpi, validated before delivery, with year, document type, number and date from the inventory in the file name and in the document properties. As an archival master, each volume is also delivered as TIFF at 600 dpi in colour with an embedded sRGB colour profile.

The council records contain personal data. All work is therefore done on our own premises in Kågeröd, without cloud services and without subcontractors, and the files are delivered on an encrypted USB drive.

The work has just begun: the first volumes have been scanned, and three of them — two from 1971 and one from 1980 — are going to the city archives for approval before the rest are scanned.

Read more about our service for scanning of minutes — we digitise minutes, municipal publications and other archival series into searchable, archival PDF files.