Monday, May 27, 2013

The Value Of Using A Microfiche Scanner

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.

Physical space is still needed to store sheets of microfiche, although it is admittedly much smaller than that needed to store full texts. They generally require special magnification equipment to be able to read them, also, due to their greatly reduced size. This can be frustrating if you are looking for something specific, because that very equipment can be awkward and imprecise.

A great deal of information storage has moved to being digital in recent years, largely because it solves many of these problems. There is no physical space required to store records, so much more can be brought together in the same place. Other than a computer, there is no special equipment required to access the records.

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.

The conversion process is not difficult, in general, but it can be lengthy. This will mainly depend on how many documents need to be scanned, and what sort of shape they are in. Particularly with the decreasing cost of scanners, however, the overall cost of maintaining the records should decrease, because they will no longer need to be cared for and maintained in their physical state.

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.

Since music, films, and even books in our own personal libraries have already gone digital, it only makes sense to ensure that our historical documents and past records undergo the same process. Preventing the degradation of these materials is very important, but they are of no use to anyone if they cannot be read at all. By employing a microfiche scanner to make copies that are far more suited to frequent perusal, we make certain that the information contained in older storage methods is not lost, but is rather simply copied.




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