Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeénnes de Recherche, Groupe des Cartothécaires de LIBER

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Technical drawings in the reclaimed land

R. van Essen en C. Verlaan, Central Drawing Archives, Zuiderzee Project Department

© LIBER and author
Published from: Bulletin Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeénnes de Recherche, 28(1986)

lntroduction
The Zuiderzee Project Department is one of twelve Regional Directorates of the Department of Water Affairs responsible for the construction, maintenance and management of roads, dikes, rivers, canals and bridges. Originally the Zuiderzee Project Department was entrusted with the reclamation and development of the Zuiderzee project, which involved the closing off of the Zuiderzee by means of a large dam between the coasts of North Holland and Friesland, and the partial reclamation of the enclosed area (Fig. 1).
The offices of the Project Department used to be distributed in various towns in the Netherlands, but in 1975 they were centralized in Lelystad, a town at the centre of the new polders and named after Dr. Lely, the initiator of the Zuiderzee project. This meant that eight drawing offices, each with its own archives, became located in one building. It used to be customary that one of the drawing office draughtsman would be in charge of the archives, and would register, file and make copies of the drawings. As several archives existed without a comprehensive indexing system, duplication of effort frequently occurred.
In 1976 it was decided to merge all drawing office archives into one central archive (Fig. 2) in order to make all drawings available to all departments and to avoid such duplication. Naturally there was stiff opposition from the various offices which feared that a new cataloguing system might be inaccessible and delivery times of copies excessive. In practise, these fears proved groundless. The newly designed cataloguing system proved to be accessible and delivery times of copies did not take long as the printing room was situated next to the central drawing archives.
As a first step towards a centralised system, a commission was set up consisting of representatives of the various offices, who recommended a cataloguing system and who went into the successive steps necessary to undertake the operation whilst minimising the amount of disruption. These recommendations were approved by management and at the end of 1976 a start was made with the implementation of the new system.
The new system meant that not only had new numbers to be given to all existing drawings but also that the drawings themselves had to be newly coded and registered. In addition, the various drawing office archives had to be moved to one central archive.

The catalogue-system
The commission examined various options already in use by the Department of Water Affairs. One of these was the Universal Decimal Classification, but this was felt to be too complex, whilst lacking in subject speciality.
In order to be able to retrieve a certain drawing or drawings five different 'leads' were introduced: At an early stage it was realized that full use of the computer had to be made in order to retrieve a particular drawing in the shortest possible time. It was decided that information was only going to be held on computer and that no index cards or similar systems would co-exist.
As all drawings were to be stored in one room, the chances of damage or destruction in case of accident would substantially increase. A second identical archive elsewhere was therefore necessary, and a microfilm copy of the archive was chosen for this purpose.
These three points considered in relation to the cataloguing system will now be examined in greater detail.

Retrieval of drawings, code indication
All drawings are related to a geographical position as well as to a certain subject (Fig. 3. ). On a registration scheme sixteen geographical areas, allocated numbers, as well as seventy four subjects, also allocated numbers, were indicated relating to the Zuiderzee Project. By means of a cross reference each drawing was given a letter/figure code.
Registration number of a drawing. The application of registration numbers consisted of two parts, the application of new numbers to old drawings, and the application of new numbers to new drawings.
New registration numbers had to be applied to old drawings (Fig. 4) as the various offices had used the same number for different drawings. When a new number is allocated to an old drawing the old one is also retained as this is often referred to in letters and specifications. New numbers are issued in chronological order. No numbers are being reserved for specific productions.
Departmental indication. In addition to a number, four different letter combinations are in use, representing the main sections within the organization.
Project specification number. A drawing is often related to the specification for a project, and the specification number is also used to register the drawing.

Use of the computer
The commission realized that use of the computer was necessary for retrieval when dealing with an archive consisting of tens of thousands of drawings.
For the registration of a drawing, data sheets are used which contain eighty fixed positions (Fig. 5), on which all particulars of the drawing to be stored are laid down.
The registration information is input through online terminal (Fig. 6) to the computer of the Department of Information Processing which is situated in Rijswijk near The Hague, whilst output is on a line printer. After information is stored, lists of related information belonging to one file are printed out. These lists are used by the various offices, and include: the code list; the chronological number list; the microfilm list; and the department list.
The code list is important for the retrieval of drawings related to a certain subject (Fig. 7) when the registration number is not known.
The chronological number list gives all the drawings (Fig. 8) as registered by the archivist, and is used as a means of control. Annually, numbering is started again at 0001, preceded by the year of issue.
The microfilm list is used to assist in the production of microfilm. It is similar to the chronological number list but some information not required is deleted.
The department list shows all drawings produced by an office in one particular year.

The microfilm archive
A problem facing each archive is lack of space as well as the vulnerability of the documents. Microfilm offers a solution for both problems but there are also a number of disadvantages attached to its use.
One advantage is the saving of space. It stands to reason that microfilms take up less space than drawings. In one cubic metre of space, for example, one thousand drawings can be stored on one hundred thousand microphotos, whilst the space necessary for the laying out of drawings is no longer required. Improved accessibility is another advantage. Due to their size, microphotos are easy to handle and their accessibility in comparison to drawings is greatly incrcased. Increased security is also an advantage. By using microphotos it becomes possible to establish one or more duplicate archives elsewhere which greatly increases security should the original archive be destroyed or damaged.
The disadvantages are, firstly, that in order to read or copy the microphoto at least one optical reader or reader-printer is necessary. We purchased a reader-printer which is able to make prints to DIN-A2 size. With the existing equipment it is also possible to enlarge one particular part of a microphoto or to make a print of such a part.
A second disadvantage is that it is expensive to produce an enlargement to the size of the original drawing when the drawing itself has been destroyed.
As specialized and expensive equipment is required, these services have had to be centralized in the Hague and are carried out for all directorates by the Department of Water Affairs. An enlargement to original size on polyester drawing film will cost something in the order of one hundred and fifty guilders, though in practice such enlargements are only required for a small percentage of stored microphotos.
A further drawback is that the quality of an enlargement of a microphoto is slightly poorer than the quality of the original. In order to obtain the best possible replica, certain requirements in relation to the quality of drawing work have to be made. This applies in particular to the thickness of lines and to annotations. Specifications relating to these requirements are laid down in the Dutch Standard NEN 3526. Other aspects of microphotos mentioned previously need further examination.
The production of microphotos is undertaken by our specialized Department in the Hague. Drawings forwarded for filming are accompanied by a computer-compiled list, on which Department of Water Affairs has been allocated a special code (Fig. 9). Three microphotos are made of each drawing for three different archives. These are: At our own office, microphotos are stored in chronologicalorder in a special rotating cabinet.
Drawings have to be destroyed in order to create room in the drawing archive and as a logical outcome of the microfilming process. Certain rules have to be obeyed however: a drawing can only be destroyed if it complies with the microfilm norm NEN 3526 and a duplicate microphoto is present in the General State Archive; it has to be retained, however, if the drawing is of historical value, if it does not comply with the NEN-norm, if it is subject to frequent alterations, or if it shows little contrast.
The introduction of a microphoto archive does not mean that the storage of drawings is completely a thing of the past. (Fig. 10). Initially, drawings have to be stored before microfilming and a number of drawings are not allowed to be destroyed, as we have seen earlier. Drawings are centrally filed in cabinets withjn vertical filing system, which means that drawings are vertically positioned in chronological order , that handling is easy, and that space is used efficiently (Fig. 11). New drawings which are still subject to alterations stay at the office of origin. Completed drawings are being moved to the central archives for microfilming and/or storage.

Working methods of cataloguing, registration of drawings
The moment a new drawing is embarked on in one of the drawing offices, the draughtsman concerned notifies the archivist and requests a registration number. He is then issued with the first available chronological number, which could be, for examples ZZRFf 840627, in which: ZZ indicates the Department, RF indicates the Main Section to which the drawing office belongs, T indicates the type of document, in this case a drawing, 84 indicates the year of production, and 0627 the chronological number of the drawing. This registration number is entered on the drawing itself. Existing drawings on which so many alternations have been made that in fact a new drawing has been produced receive a new number. In the register, the old number is also recorded.
In addition to the registration number, other relevant information is added on the worksheet (Fig. 12), consisting of: drawing size, which is standardized and complies with the Dutch norm NEN 379, (rules for technical drawings); scale (the term 'various' is used when more than one scale has been applied); principal and secondary classification by means of the sixteen geographical areas and seventy four subjects; the job specification number, recorded if a drawing relates to a particular project; and a short description of the drawing, given to indicate the subject matter. Last but not least, the name of the draughtsman is recorded.
All this information is typed out and distributed among the various drawing offices in order to inform all concerned of drawings produced in other offices thus avoiding unnecessary work. The register is used as a base for relaying the information to the data sheets for computer storage and recording (Fig. 13).

Copying of drawings
Drawings are requested verbally or by means of a small form. The lending of drawings is based on trust and does not give any problems. A special lending card is used for recording information such as registration number, name of borrower and date of issue. This card will then replace the drawing until it is returned. Requests for diazo prints follow a similar course (Fig. 14). The archivist sends the drawings of which copies are requested to the printing room, copies of the drawing being delivered by messenger while the drawing is returned to the archives.

Conclusion
The setting up and running of the new archive has been achieved without major setbacks, mainly due to a thorough planning process. For the near future, we are considering the use of computer-output microfiche in order to make the retrieval system even more compact, and we are also contemplating a retrieval system for microphotos. In short, the archive functions well and new employees are able to effectively exploit the archive very quickly.

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