Business Overview  

The Hollandse Club, (also fondly known as the Dutch Club) located along the lush tropical foliage off Camden Park, is an international club with complete modern club facilities for its members.  Besides serving its Dutch community, its membership also consists of over 40 nationalities, thus making the Club the ideal platform for both social and professional networking.  True to it international status, its club members also enjoy also extensive Reciprocal Clubs privileges around the world. Three and a half years ago, noting that the Dutch community had been in Singapore way for over a century, the Club’s then Secretary (now President), Mr. Andrew Baartsheer, proposed to the Club’s committee to track down the Club’s history previously not documented. A Heritage Committee was formed to conduct an extensive research through all available records outside the Club.

This research project eventually  led the committee to public sources such as Singapore Archive, National Library Board and Internet where a whole lot of new information such as Dutch’s roles in Singapore dock and maritime were dug out.  The extensive search also brought Mr. Baartscheer to The British Library, in London, and,  to a   Dutch lady living in Netherlands who turned out to be a daughter of the First Secretary of Hollandse Club in the 1930s. An almost complete list of Presidents and other committee members covering the period from 1908-1942 was uncovered. Pictures of the Club’s first clubhouse and its building plan and the Club’s first known address were also uncovered.

The Challenge

Armed with an enormous amount of new documented information of the Club, Mr. Baartscheer began to record and scan all the relevant documents such as conveyance documents,  register of deeds, newspapers articles, write-ups, reviews and old photographs which provided some links to the Club’s history before World War II. The images to be scanned were eventually going to make their way to an in-house exhibition and into a coffee-book publication to celebrate its centennial anniversary in 2008. The initial scanner that was used then to scan the various documents of different texture, quality, sizes and image resolution however soon proved to be a challenge as it was scanning at a pace and quality less than desired. It was also not meeting publication size and resolution requirements.

The Solution

After evaluating options to improve the scanning rate and quality, the Avision AV8050U document scanner was identified. With a combination of flatbed color scanning and a scanning speed of 50 ppm, the difficult task of archiving three years worth of research soon became a breeze. Bigger documents such as A3 size were scanned in its entirety using the A3 size flatbed. As the AV8050U is designed with buttons to increase ease of use, it facilitated fast and large document feeding, allowing the scanner to handle any scanning job. With a reliable paper handling, this enhanced color scanner also captured the best image quality from the old documents such as odd sized newspapers cuttings. Color scanning also provides a more authentic reproduction of the original documents such as old photos, and, brought out details in a single pass.  “This scanner was really easy to use, easy to install, a great plug and play tool.” Said Mr. Andrew Baartscheer, President of Hollandse Club. “I was able to scan and capture all the old articles and photos of our Club’s history without losing its image resolution which is great.” 

The Results

The new scanner also reduced the amount of manual work such as arranging all documents in sequence singularly by using the batch scanning function. This frees up the time needed for individual scanning time for different types of documents and allows more time spent on archiving the documents into relevant libraries for future retrieval purposes. The digitized records also allow the Hollandse Club to have publication quality images for its current exhibition and its upcoming coffee-book publication for its centennial celebrations in Singapore.

“Avision  AV 8050U scanner’s high scanning speed and user-ability makes it a great tool for internal processes and ensuring documents image elements are truly and fully captured.”  Said Mr. Derek Lee, Group CEO of Pericom Group of Companies. “Details are kept without compromising on quality of the documents.”