Saztec, North Crescent Road 1                                                                                                                31 August 2002

Saztec used this building from November 1986 until it went into liquidation in 2001.  From 1927 to 1988, a wider site was occupied by the Shell Oil Refinery. Saztec Europe Limited was the European division of the American based company, Saztec International Incorporated which specialised in the retroconversion of library catalogues into computer format so that they could be easily accessed from anywhere it the world. Saztec was a leader in this field and handled work from the General Register Office for Scotland, the British Library, the Bibliotheque National in France, the German National Library Deutsche Bibliothek and other national libraries, such as those of Sweden and Iceland. They also converted information, for example, law newspapers for other British companies. Coding staff had to gain a basic knowledge of different languages in order to put the MARC (machine readable cataloging) library codes on to the information which was then sent to the keying department where copy typists transferred it to computer databases in a variety of languages. The information was then verified by rekeying and proof-read before being sent to customers. Saztec demanded extremely high accuracy from its workforce to produce an excellent product for its customers. Wages were dependent on speed and accuracy.

The building was demolished between 22 June and 5 July 2003.