Thursday 30 May 2013

Unique Content Article on computer, hardware, software, internet, data

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 method that libraries and other document storehouses have used to preserve large or potentially fragile works. It involves shrinking down a copy of the page to a tiny fraction of its normal size and reproducing it on a single sheet along with many others like it. Although still functional, it is a bit archaic.

Despite the much smaller amount of space required by microfiche as opposed to full texts, storage is still necessary. Also, they usually cannot be read without the use of special equipment. This can often make it difficult and time-consuming to find exactly what you are looking for without being forced to sift through a lot of extraneous content.

Digital storage goes a long way toward solving many of these issues. Physical space is needed only in a very minimal capacity, meaning that accessing larger amounts of data from one location is much easier. Aside from a computer, which is more accessible to most people than a reader, no other special equipment is needed to access the documents once scanned.

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 scanning process is quite easy to accomplish, but depending on how much needs to be converted, it can take some time. As the hardware has improved, though, it has gotten not only easier, but less expensive as well. Caring for old, sometimes fragile records can be quite costly, and after the initial outlay for the scanner itself, that expense goes away.

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.

Nearly all of the media that we interact with on a daily basis is moving in a digital direction. In many cases, it is not only moving, but has actively settled into a comfortably digital future. Preserving important data and documents with a microfiche scanner is a smart way to make sure that this technology is being used to allow people access to records they might not otherwise have, or at least would not have without quite a lot of difficulty.




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