It is important that scanned copies of documents are legible to the NLA SMD staff, they must be able to read the documents to determine the contents and process the documents correctly. 

The Surveys & Mapping Division accepts documents that have been scanned from paper, printed to PDF format and in some cases supporting documents may be images such as JPEG files, CAD files or zipped collections of files such as Shape files.

Scanned documents should generally be scanned at 200 dpi (dots per inch) in black and white, and should be formatted as TIF files. This generally provides a clear, readable image in a format that does not lose the fidelity of the image.

In some cases documents will need to be scanned at a higher resolution to make them readable. This generally only happens when the document contains fine print that is not readable at 200 dpi.

Some documents such as copies of ID cards, color survey plans or other documents where color is important will need to be scanned in color. We recommend only scanning the pages that need the color using a color setting.

These scanning guidelines will help to ensure that your documents do not exceed the 50MB maximum size for documents and that they are readable.