The Arts Society Falmouth

The Royal Philatelic Society London

The Royal Philatelic Society London has a vast collection of historical documents, including a large range of secure paper items such as bank notes and stamps, including the famous Penny Black. Some of these are the records of the Perkins Bacon Company which was established in 1828 as a Security printer.

Working with the Royal Philatelic Society London and involving volunteers from The Arts Societies across the country, the aim of the ongoing project is to make their archived material available and more accessible for online research purposes.

This project deals with the historic Engraving Books, of which there are 17, each containing typically between 150 and 200 pages. These ledgers are scanned so that images of each page are available. (See the sample page above) The pages are emailed to the volunteers in small batches to allow the volunteers to read through and pick out key words and important phrases. These are then typed into a provided Microsoft Word document and submitted to the RSPL to be checked and collated. These will then be made available on the web for anyone to view by creating a search aid for those interested to identify pages that contain information of relevance to them. They should be of great value to many audiences, including family tree researchers and numismatists, as well as philatelists.