The Future of the Past
Zeutschel products help to preserve the written word for posterity and to make precious information digitally available
One of the first things you see upon entering the headquarters of Zeutschel GmbH in the German town of Tuebingen, is a stone slab engraved with the words of the German poet, Johann Ludwig Uhland:
We know that sheets of paper Are only brittle leaves,
They're prey to every taper And vanish with the breeze.
“Like the poet,” says Joerg Vogler, one of Zeutschel’s two CEOs, “libraries and archives all over the world have long had to live with the fact that invaluable books and ancient docu-ments can be lost forever. It is only in the last fifteen-odd years that things have changed.” Zeutschel has initiated this process of change by committing the company to ‘The Future of the Past’. Joerg Vogler explains: “Following the company philosophy, Zeutschel pro-vides the most advanced digitisation technologies and analogue systems helping leading institutions not only to preserve precious information contained in books, newspapers, journals and other bounded documents, but also to make them available in digital form for the general public”.
Take Harvard University Library. In 2006, with the help of Zeutschel, it completed a project to create and make available online digital images of 35 rare and unique musical items – works by or relating to the Bach family, compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi, and the Harvard Song Book.
Or take the Universal Digital Library, for example, which is scanning and putting online a collection of one million books using 100 Zeutschel scanners. The ultimate goal of this im-pressive project – likely to go on for hundreds of years - is to digitise all the cultural arte-facts of the world available in paper form and to make these accessible to the public in one
“Almost every national library in the world has at least one of our systems in use,” Joerg Vogler says with justifiable pride.
The Pioneer in Digitisation
Zeutschel has emerged as one of the most innovative companies in the business, con-stantly coming up with new, often customised solutions and more user-friendly products. The range includes book scanners and copiers as well as software for capturing and document delivery. In addition to digitisation, the company offers the latest analogue pro-cedures and equipment, including microfilm solutions like cameras, scanners and expo-sure systems.
Zeutschel began operations in 1961 in Stuttgart, Germany, since 1967 the headquarter is based in the university town of Tuebingen. The recent market success would have not been possible without the present two CEOs, Joerg Vogler and Hans-Peter Heim, who are shaping the business strategy since its management buy-out in 1996. Their interim results are impressive: the company’s turnover has been tripled in just 12 years. But both the CEOs point to the company’s most important resource of sixty high-qualified employees and the company’s drive for product innovation.
Says Joerg Vogler, the CEO of the company, “I believe our strength lies in the fact that the complete manufacturing process, the quality control and all R&D activities are based in Tuebingen. ‘Made in Germany’ signifies quality of the highest level to our clients world-wide. In addition, we continuously invest in research and development to give our products an edge. It is this fundamental belief in R&D that produces technological progress and long-term growth.”
He adds that about ten to fifteen percent of the company’s turnover are invested in R&D and about half of the company’s working force is engaged in research and development.
Therefore it is not surprising that Zeutschel has established itself as one of the pio-neers and leaders in the field. Some prove points:
- Together with Kodak the German company launched the first overhead scanner in the mid-90s,
- in 1997, Zeutschel introduced the first greyscale book scanner,
- and one year later a colour book scanner, which, for the first time, combined good image quality with enhanced productivity.
- Its most recent innovation is the Perfect Book technology, which has found almost instant success in libraries. With this new product, ugly distortions in text – which in conventional copiers appear at the centre where the books unfold – are automati-cally smoothened out. The result is the famed ‘perfect’ image quality that can be used for further digital processing or for printing. Perfect Book is used in Zeutschel’s latest models: the OS 12000 and OS 14000.
Opening the Market
With the introduction of zeta, a revolutionary self service scan station for bound and un-bound documents up to > A3 (480 mm x 360 mm). This model is conceived not only for library and archive use, up to today Zeutschel’s typical customer base, but for the entire administration spectrum – wherever bound documents need to be brought into a digital workflow.
Wherever zeta turned up since its introduction on CeBIT 2011, spectators reacted enthu-siastic to the simplicity of its handling, the quality of the scans and not last to the exciting design of this new model.
Making Microfilm Solutions High-tech Again
At the time the entire world had practically given up on ‘antiquated’ microfilm, Zeutschel introduced state-of-the-art semiconductor technology that made it very much up to date again. The new Archive Writer OP 500 writes digital images and documents on 16- and 35-mm film, and provides high-quality visual elements. Besides conventional storage in grey scales and in black and white, the OP 500 makes storage possible on colour micro-film as well.
In combination with Zeutschel microfilm scanners an innovative hybrid solution emerges, which combines the best of both worlds - digital and analogue. The solution enables users to convey digital information onto an analogue system for long-term preservation. If neces-sary, they can also re-digitise this data and integrate it with existing IT-structures.
The demand for microfilm did not only come from libraries, archives and museums, but also from professional photo agencies that use microfilm exposure system for filming slides. In addition, companies are using the OP 500 to preserve everything from patents to construction plans.
“Clearly microfilm technology is still a good business today, responsible for 20 percent of the company’s turnover”, emphasizes Joerg Vogler.
Federal Archive in Koblenz, the Bavarian State Library in Munich, the Goettingen State and University Library, to name just a few. Increasingly, however, those investing in Zeutschel solutions include survey and land registry offices as well as service companies employed in document management.
Such projects have translated into impressive profits. In fact, since the mid-90s the com-pany has been showing a remarkable growth. Today it has partners in over 100 countries and exports about 80 percent of its products. Most of its export business is conducted in the United States, the Far East and Russia. And despite the current economic crisis, Zeutschel continues to grow. During the financial year 2008-2009 (ending June 30), the company expects turnover to exceed 10 million Euros, a growth of about 10 percent over the last financial year.
In the immediate future, Zeutschel is looking ahead to a further expansion of the market for its OS 14000 series, which is designed for mass digitisation and offers unique facsimile quality. The national library in Den Haag has five such machines in operation already, and plans to digitalise 8 million newspaper pages and provide them online over the next three years.
The company also launched Goobi-zed, a product that controls digital workflows and the presentation of digital images on the Web. Zeutschel believes Goobi-zed will prove to be enormously beneficial to libraries and archives.
As another great poet, W H Longfellow, wrote: Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.
Zeutschel is proud helping to preserve these footprints, which otherwise might get lost on the sands of time.
Zeutschel – Like being there!
