Friday, 24 May 2013

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How A Microfiche Scanner Preserves Information

By Tisha Greer


While perhaps not all older technology gets replaced, a great deal of it does, for good reasons. We may find something that does the job better, or simply come up with a new version of what came before. A great example of this is the transition between microfiche documents and digital copies, which are produced by putting the former through a microfiche scanner.

Microfiche is a type of extremely scaled-down document where multiple pages of a text are condensed onto a single sheet. It is commonly used in places such as libraries to preserve works that might be too fragile or too unwieldy to peruse normally. It is, however, an older type of technology.

However, there are some issues with microfiche. There still needs to be sufficient space to store it, even though it is less than if the full texts were kept. Also, special equipment is usually needed to read it, since it is so small. Frequently, this can be very frustrating, as pinpointing precisely what you want can take time and a lot of sifting through surrounding material.

Many of these problems are solved by converting these types of records to digital formats. This eliminates the vast majority of the need for physical space, meaning more data can be accessible from more locations. The only special equipment needed is a computer, which is often easier to find and use than a special reader.

The largest difference between older methods and digital conversion is the ease of organization offered by the latter. A few key strokes can lead you directly to what you want to find without a lot of tiresome searching. Things can be cataloged and indexed in any way that you like, or indeed in multiple ways, which would not be possible in a physical format.

If there is a large backlog of content to convert, then the process can take a fairly large amount of time. However, it is generally a simple procedure, and the hardware available for the task has grown more advanced and less expensive. In fact, there is nearly always an overall cost reduction after a scanner is purchased, due to no longer needing to care for sometimes fragile and unreliable archival systems.

Scanners will only be able to reproduce what is already present in a document, no matter the format. Damaged or low-quality microfiche will produce a digital file that contains the same imperfections, so it is important to keep that in mind. What you start out with will be exactly the same as what you end up with, for better or for worse.

From music libraries to film collections, it seems like nearly everything that used to only exist in physical formats is now primarily digital. Extending this preservation method to important pieces of data and record-keeping is a natural step here. By using a microfiche scanner to make such records more stable and accessible, we make sure that older documents can still be used and enjoyed easily without fear of damaging or destroying them through overuse.




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