Current developments within technology mean that now may be the time to consider converting your old stock of microfiche into electronic files by having your archived microfiche files digitized. The decision on whether to use a specialist company that are familiar with microfiche scanning or undertake the project yourself depends on the volume of information to be converted.
If you only have a small amount of information then having a specialist microfiche scanning company is probably the best solution. Should cost not be an issue or you already have the expertise in house then purchasing a conversion machine could be the solution.
There are various types of formats that a company could use to have their data stored as, in the past. Whether it was on microfiche, 35mm microfilm or aperture cards it is essential to distinguish the format and standard of archive you are processing as each will need a somewhat different process to convert to an digital file.
There are other questions that you need to ask before converting your stock, such as: what DPI (dots per inch) do you require the new files to be created in, two hundred dpi is quite often sufficient for common PDF files however if you require information to be saved for any OCR processing then it should be at a significantly higher 300 dpi. Standard machines are too simple to handle any large volume conversions well, while the expense of purchasing a microfiche scanner for small-scale conversion work is realistically out of the question.
Equally if your archived data is to be saved in multiple formats and you require COM fiche, large format, jacketed fiche or any of the other rarer formats that have been fashionable over time, then conversion to PDF (portable document format) files will prove to be an expensive in house answer.
At such a cost why bother converting old stock to an electronic format? The advent of the Internet means that the forwarding, sharing and exchanging of information in PDF format has become the industry norm these days.
On the whole, with older companies there may be large quantities of information still in use that could benefit from being able to be transferred through the Internet. PDF electronic files can also be encrypted for security protection, secured to prevent alteration and consume even less storage space than the companies original microfiche and microfilm files.
When you are ready to invest in digitizing microfiche, make sure you check out Carole Lancasters' excellent free report about Digitize Microfiche, and Invoice Scanning
Orignal From: Why Digitize Microfiche And Carry Out Invoice Scanning
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