STANSTED Airport Community Trust Fund is helping a history society to archive its records and make them available to the public. The trust has awarded more than �1000 to The Radwinter Society for the purchase of an archival-quality A3 scanner. This virtua

STANSTED Airport Community Trust Fund is helping a history society to archive its records and make them available to the public.

The trust has awarded more than �1000 to The Radwinter Society for the purchase of an archival-quality A3 scanner.

This virtually completes a �3000 funding programme to ensure the archiving and availability of Radwinter's unique historical record collection.

Chair of The Radwinter Society, Michael Southgate, said: "The need for an A3 scanner was identified earlier this year during The Radwinter Society's History Fair.

"The Village Hall was crowded and our volunteers were kept busy all day scanning in documents and photographs. A weakness was our inability to scan A3 and larger documents of which huge numbers were presented."

The new scanner will enable people who wish to retain the originals of historic documents they hold to share copies with a wider public. Old house deeds, farm log books, registers and memorabilia of past events all provide a potent insight into times past.

As most documents before the advent of the metric measurements were at least foolscap size, copying them with an A4 scanner was at the best tedious and at the worst nigh impossible.

The acquisition of the scanner will almost complete the Radwinter archiving funding project in which thousands of documents collected by the three successive Radwinter Recorders are being archived onto the Recorders of Uttlesford History (RUTH) database, housed in archival quality materials and stored in archival shelving.

Other donors to the project have been Recorders of Uttlesford History - �132 for archival boxes and an archival photo album; Uttlesford District Council - �1111 for archival racking and materials; with a further �500 from Radwinter Parish Council.

A further �500 will still be needed to complete the project by the purchase of a suitable laptop computer to drive the scanner, and software to store the scanned documents and photographs. In the meantime, privately owned computers will be used for this purpose.

For more information visit the Radwinter Society's website at www.radwinterhistory.org.uk or the RUTH website at www.recordinguttlesfordhistory.org.uk.