October 2007 Meeting: 'Getting your Family History into Print' by Kate Parchment

Kate is the third generation in charge at Parchment Printers of Oxford. This is a firm started by her grandfather 46 years ago when they were still using metal typesetting. Since then they have moved to other forms of printing, principally litho and digital printing. Although based in Oxford they accept contracts from all over the country and some 60% of their work comes from outside where e-mail makes it easy to send copy to them. They specialise in short run print jobs for both societies and individuals. A print run can be for a single copy or up to several thousand.

Making a printed report of your family history research should be the final fun bit of work with the objective of producing something that looks good and will interest other people. Having assembled the text, charts and pictures you need to plan the look of the final report. You need to make a plan. It is best to start out by aiming for the best, but you need to remember your budget. How much is it worth to you and the people who will read it? You need to think why you are making this report and who is going to read it.

When considering the type of printing there are two main options, litho or digital. Litho will produce a better quality result, but has an initial set-up charge for production of the plates and will also have costs for ink and operator costs. A wider range of paper types can be used, but a print run of more than 500 would be preferable to spread the costs.

Digital printing is essentially a glorified photocopier with the emphasis on glorified. Essentially it is a print on demand service and the final cost is proportional to the number of documents printed. The original material can be your own printed pages or they can be sent electronically as a PDF document. You can also send in your original material, handwritten if necessary, and this will be prepared for you.

When you have decided on the content of the report it is advisable to talk to your printer before producing the material for reproduction. Advice can be given on details such as margin widths and size of type for the page size you are using and also on the quality of material submitted, particularly with reference to images. These must be of adequate resolution, but you also need to consider colour changes between your original and the printed output. You can also choose the weight and quality of paper, which has a major effect on the look of the final product.

At this stage you need to get quotes from different printers but make sure that you are comparing like for like. It is not unusual for a quotation for litho printing to exclude the cost of making plates and here quotations can vary by 20 to 50 per cent. Quotations for digital printing tend to be more standard. A proof copy is to check the quality of the printing, not for you to make changes to the text. Minor changes can be made here, but if they involve extra work for the printer they are chargeable.

Two main types of binding are used although spiral binding is also an option. Saddle stitching, using the staples along the spine, can now be used for quite large reports. These can be opened out flat and also of course have a cover of your choice. Perfect bound books are glued and the resulting square spine can be used on which a title can be printed. For a special report hard covers could be added to one or two copies and dust covers, printed with title and images, would make a final touch.