Friday, May 24, 2013

Preserving Your Documents With A Microfiche Scanner

By Tisha Greer


Throughout the years, many different ways of collecting and storing information have been used. Sooner or later, though, most of these methods have become outdated, or at least not used as commonly as they once were. One such example is information stored on microfiche, which is frequently converted into a more convenient digital format by using 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.

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.

It is important to note that scanners cannot work miracles. They can only reproduce what already exists. If a piece of microfiche has been damaged or was simply not of very high quality to begin with, its scanned version will be the same. You will simply be gaining a copy that is as close to the original format as possible.

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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