Your Microfilm and Microfiche DR Copy Could Be Unusable.

Is it Time to Consider a Microfilm and Microfiche Conversion Solution?

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The Internet, cloud computing, SaaS, virtualization, etc. often take the front seat to many organizational information technology-based initiatives. Legacy technologies like microfilm and microfiche are looked at as old and even unimportant. Ask your average person about microfilm or microfiche and they may think of bulky devices, newspapers and the library or a local recorder's office. Many people probably think that microfilm and microfiche have all but vanished from organizations.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, large quantities of microfilm and microfiche continue to reside in both public and private organizations. In some cases, the microfilm or microfiche copies serve as back-ups to be used only in cases of a disaster. If your organization relies on microfilm or microfiche as your backup copy to be used in a disaster recovery scenario, you could be facing the growing problem of deterioration. If your microfilm and microfiche records are not regularly examined and stored in the proper environment, your organization could be placed in a very difficult position - recovering from a disaster only to find that many of your records are unreadable due to damaged and deteriorating microfilm or microfiche archives. Document compliance and citizen/customer service levels could take a drastic hit if your microfilm and microfiche records are not part of your overall disaster recovery solution.

A Microfilm and Microfiche Conversion Solution

In many cases, microfiche and microfilm collections suffer from neglect. As a storage medium, it doesn't have the budgetary appeal that other digital projects have. Your organization may not have a qualified staff person tasked with maintaining the microfiche and microfilm archive.

The safest way to avoid microfilm or microfiche deterioration problems is to consider a microfilm and microfiche conversion solution and move your archives to a digital format. In that way, your records will finally move to a digital format, making it easy to apply existing backup and disaster recovery policies to the information. Once your records are digitized, they'll be placed within the same policies as other digital information within your environment for data protection and recovery. Multiple copies of your data will be made, most likely at different locations, to ensure that your records will be recoverable in the event that a flood or other natural disaster occurs at one of your sites.

A Difficult Choice

In today's economy, budgets are stretched like they have never been before. Replacing a broker microfilm and microfiche reader printer or duplicating older microfiche or microfilm often doesn't make sense. After all, your organization is spending money to maintain a legacy, archaic technology. Investing in a solution for the future like a microfilm and microfiche conversion solution is the right way to advance the long-term interests of your organization. However, once you've decided that a microfilm and microfiche conversion solution is the right approach, what decision criteria should you use to decide which microfilm and microfiche conversion solution to select from?

Microfilm and Microfiche Conversion Solution Considerations

What about possible microfilm and microfiche conversion solutions? When considering a microfilm and microfiche conversion service bureau, staff, facilities and technology are important. Confidential and sensitive data is often contained within records archived on microfilm and microfiche. It is very important to select a microfilm and microfiche conversion service bureau with the security parameters in place (e.g. HIPAA-compliant) to protect your vital information.

In addition to the microfilm and microfiche conversion facilities, affordability, microfilm and microfiche conversion accuracy and digital image quality are three key considerations your organization should look at when evaluating alternatives.

Microfilm and Microfiche Conversion Affordability

If your organization has invested or researched microfilm and microfiche conversion solutions in the past, it comes as no surprise that these solutions can get pricey. Most microfilm and microfiche conversion offerings price per image rather than per microfilm roll or microfiche. Indexing, quality assurance and image quality are typically add-on options that can make the overall microfilm and microfiche conversion solution very expensive. Newer solutions on the market are now available that have been designed for the budget-constrained organization. Priced per microfiche and microfilm roll, these solutions deploy cost-effective methods to digitally convert records so that highly attractive price points can be offered - even for the largest of archives or archives that are infrequently accessed (and often skipped over due to budgetary considerations).

A Microfilm and Microfiche Conversion Accuracy

Many organizations don't fully realize how labor intensive and error-prone a standard microfilm and microfiche conversion project can be. Standard microfilm and microfiche conversion services miss a percentage of your records as the information is converted from microfilm and microfiche to digital files. Standard microfilm and microfiche conversion services dissociate each image from the microfilm roll and microfiche as it is digitally converted. In some cases, the microfilm and microfiche conversion equipment miss images as they are converted from film. In other cases, the actual image is converted, however the manual key entry is performed incorrectly, resulting in a lost image because it will not be indexed correctly and thus never appear in a search result. Even microfilm and microfiche conversion services that offer 99% conversion accuracy can still result in hundreds-to-thousands of lost records.

You are only going to convert your records once. Accurately converting your records (minimizing lost documents during the microfilm and microfiche conversion process) is critical. Solutions on the market can avoid missed records because they literally scan the entire microfilm or microfiche during the microfilm and microfiche conversion process. These solutions create an archive of virtual, digital microfilm rolls and microfiche rather than an archive of lots and lots of individual images. Images are not dissociated during the microfilm and microfiche conversion process, thus avoiding any human errors due to indexing. Your organization can also visually ensure that your entire archive as been digitally scanned during the microfilm and microfiche conversion process because you'll be able to look at the digital, virtual microfilm rolls and microfiche.

Digital Image Quality with Adjustable Grayscale

Digital image quality is another key microfilm and microfiche conversion consideration. Images archived on microfilm and microfiche may be very difficult to-read for a couple of reasons. In some cases, the record was not properly converted to microfilm or microfiche in the first place and the image may have sections that are unreadable. In other cases, microfilm or microfiche deterioration over time results in sections that are unreadable.

When you evaluate a potential microfilm and microfiche conversion solution, think about this as an opportunity to enhance the quality of your entire archive as it is converted to a digital format. Solutions on the market offer grayscale as a standard feature. Adjustable grayscale is a newer feature on the market that adds a photographic quality to each digital record which makes it easier to view. Users have the ability to adjust the contrast and brightness of the grayscale image, fine-tuning difficult-to-read, even illegible images prior to printing, emailing and saving.

Combine Microfilm and Microfiche Conversion with SaaS and the Cloud

Finally, there are unique solutions on the market that not only provide the microfilm and microfiche conversion solution, but also offer attractive pricing options to outsource the hosting of your entire digital archive. Users simply log onto a web-based application, accessing digital records from the Internet that were once only available on microfilm and microfiche. As organizational IT departments look at cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing models, finding a microfilm and microfiche conversion solution provider that offers not only the conversion but the hosting of your records could provide a solution that truly bridges your legacy microfilm and microfiche world to the latest technologies impacting both private and public IT departments.

About BMI Imaging Systems

Since 1958, BMI Imaging Systems has been a leader in microfilm scanning, microfiche conversion and document management solutions. BMI has developed the Digital ReeL microfilm and microfiche conversion solution, which is available nationwide. Today, BMI staff consists of 80 employees, many who have been with BMI for decades. BMI serves commercial and government agencies throughout the United States and has developed a customer list of more than 2,000 accounts. BMI is headquartered just outside San Francisco in Sunnyvale, California, with an additional production and sales facility in Sacramento, California. BMI Imaging can be found at www.bmiimaging.com.

View the Digital ReeL demo or contact BMI for more information today.