Transitioning from analogue to digital
W. & F. Pascoe has been in the micrographics business since 1957, and has extensive experience with this particular medium, whether it be microfilm reels, aperture cards or microfiche. It goes without saying thus that we are proponents of microfilm technology.
However, whilst the claimed shelf life of 500 years makes microfilm and its associated media a strong proposition for archival purposes, microfilm is slow to access, can only be used by one person at a time, and are often stored in a single location.
Digitising microfilm presents all the options and advantages you would expect from digitised paper records, and you get to keep the ultimate backups as well. We can work with one frame right through to several million frames and in most file types of images in black and white as well as greyscale format.
Our Technology
Many organisations profess to provide microfilm scanning services, or variations of micrographics scanning, amongst their myriad array of imaging services. Here at W. & F. Pascoe, microfilming and microfilm scanning, along with all its variations, is all we do – we have been doing it for a long time, and we do it well.
We offer two best of breed scanners that provide high volume processing of images from roll film, microfiche, aperture cards and other modes. However, it’s not just the scanners that deliver optimal quality: our expert staff can produce quality images from a wide range of source material and are unsurpassed in scanning poor quality microfilms.
Our Microfilm Scanning Services
We offer a wide range of microfilm scanning services that includes all digital formats:
- Bi-tonal (black and white) and grayscale scanning of 16mm and 35mm microfilm
- Bi-tonal and grayscale scanning of microfiche including COM, and jacketed fiche
- Bi-tonal and grayscale scanning of single and double chip aperture cards including automatic reading of Hollerith (punched code) data, and
- Step and repeat scanning of 35mm and 16mm microfilm, aperture cards and microfiche.
The Benefits of Digitisation
- Images can be tailored for quick delivery over the Internet or as larger, print-quality files
- Faster retrieval of information
- Multiple points of access
- Improved response time to customer enquiries
- Minimize security risk around microfilm records
- Prevent loss of data with IT support via backup
- Save on unproductive storage within valuable commercial office space
- Location of misfiled records
- Collection-wide searching (especially if combined with full document OCR)