Digital Transformation and Scanning of Microfilm formats
Microfilm Scanning Service
Microfilm Scanning
How We
Can Help
Scanning of most microfilm types.
Aperture card scanning, Microfiche scanning.
16mm and 35mm Fiche and Rollfilm scanning.
Onsite and offsite services.
Indexing and cataloguing.
Data Protection and GDPR Compliant (reg Z2002164)
plan of action
How We
Do It
full service
Microfiche Scanning Services
We have over 30 years of Microfilm scanning experience. We also understand the process of creating the Microfiche from the original paper!
There are various formats of Microfilm and Microfiche, typically these are Roll film and Microfiche, and there are 16mm and 35mm formats for each.
There are a number of reasons to scan Microfiche:
- Microfilm will continue to degrade.
- Microfiche Readers and Reader Printers are becoming rare.
- Scanning provides instant access to the records.
- GDPR, if a Subject wishes to be removed, then this is very difficult in Microfiche format. With a scanned image Redaction Software can be used.
- Information sharing and Hybrid Working.
- Backup and disaster recovery.
Our scanners create high quality Greyscale images, which is a great advantage when most microfilm is poor quality.
Turn around times for your microfilm scanning project can be tailored the Microfilm scanning project requirements. We do plenty of large scanning jobs and also plenty of small scanning jobs.
We appreciate that some Microfilm is very sensitive, because of this we offer off-site microfilm scanning services at our premises and on-site microfilm scanning services at your premises. So we will bring scanners, people, expertise and all the hardware to you. In highly secure scanning environments, upon completion of the scanning project, we can remove all hard drives from our systems and hand them over to you, so no data needs to leave site.
We are registered with the Information Commissioners Office for Data Protection and GDPR Compliant (reg Z2002164) and have signed the Data Protection Promise, we also have confidentiality agreements already drawn up by our lawyers for both parties to sign. Disks containing the scanned microfilm images are encrypted to AES256 standards.
Scanning Microfilm on-site and off-site can be in accordance with BS10008.
Microfilm is typically scanned at between 200dpi and 300dpi. This is the resolution relative to the original document, the Microfilm is scanned at many thousand dpi.
We can create hundreds of different file formats for scanned images. However the most typical are PDF and TIFF. JPEG is a popular format but is only a single page format so it does not lend itself that well to Microfiche scanning. PDF is now a recognised standard, the following formats are becoming the norm for document scanning projects and document archiving projects:
PDF/A-1b Compact ISO19005-1 Level B
PDF/A-1b Raster ISO 19005-1 Level B
Once the scanning of your Microfilm is complete, they usually need to be indexed. The exact microfilm scanning indexing requirements will depend on your requirements.
Microfiche will have a Description on the Title strip, this is what is usually used as the index for the scanned image, this maybe an Employee name in a HR department, or a Planning Application Reference in a Planning Department.
This index can be used as the filename: for example;
Smith, David_12345.pdf in a HR Department, Or
1998-1234 FP.pdf in a Planning Department.
Some clients may already have a Document Management System or database that they wish to get the data into or linked to. We can also provide scan data and index data in numerous formats, for example;
Comma Separated (.CSV), MS Excel, Ms Access, Text
Scans and index information can be returned on USB, DVD or loaded to our Cloud Services. Media containing the microfilm scans are encrypted to AES256 standards.
In instances when software is required to store and look after your scanning and indexing, we have a number of options. File Store is an entry level Document Retrieval System, designed for TIFF and PDF files. The system is based on a MS Access backend database. File Store enables users to search on a number of data fields and quickly display the scanned TIFF or PDF. The PDF or TIFF can then be emailed, printed, exported etc.