Saturday 26 July 2014

What You Need To Know About Microfiche And Microfiche Scanners

By Paulette Mason


Microfiche is made of a transparent film and is commonly used to store information, most of them are in a miniaturized form. Because of the thinness and its small sized film, this is commonly used in libraries or businesses to store millions of information without taking a lot of space. Microphotographs can also be digitalized by using microfiche scanners. Microfiche by the way, is a type of microform which is a common term used to describe several ways that provide the same storage and miniature copies of a document.

Today, even though more of our documents are now digitalized there are some advantage a fiche can do compared to the digital one. This includes, a potentially longer life span which is essential in storing important information that needs to be stored in a longer amount of time. Some libraries are still using this because of that characteristic.

Unlike digital formatted files, fiches cannot be observed by just looking at it with your eyes. You would not see anything if you do it that way. There are specific machines that need to be used for you to be able to see the content of a microfiche. This makes it a lot safer.

Today, optical scanners are now available. The scanner works like a printer which will scan in the fiche and transfer the scanned information to the computer. Once it is already scanned, it can be converted to a digital format for readability.

The most popular way of converting a fiche to a digital version is by converting it to PDF. Some formats, is compatible as well, like TIFF which is an image based format. The process of conversion will result in a multiple pages of PDF file.

Nowadays, modern computers need a certain kind of software to install for you to be able to use it in a way you want it to. In contrary, micro photographs have specific machines that only function to read micro images without installing software, updates and license keys. This makes it a lot more convenient to use than a computer.

All fiches are made with a polyester material in which the images or a document is printed. The material used is very stable and if kept in a controlled temperature can last up to 500 years. On the other hand, most CD ROMS nowadays can only last between 75 to 100 years, depending on the material it was made of.

Some organizations, like those organizations that has valuable documents that need to be preserved uses fiche to prevent loss or damage. This kind of data storage can be beneficial for the safeness of your data because of the special machines that it needs to have before it can be of use. In fact, this format can be a little interest of some thieves.

Microfiches are a good way to preserve important documents, however if you think you can keep it safe with a digitalized version then make sure that it is backup either from a safe drive, external drives or a cloud server. In that way, in case if the original one is infected by an unexpected virus, you can use your backup files instead. If you prefer to use a microfiche, then make sure that it is kept properly to make sure that it would not be harmed by moisture or any other factors that can affect the quality of the it.




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