Micro Fiche Library.

[Al Kossow]

On 10/4/16 8:02 AM, Shaun Halstead wrote:

>> I'd like to work to-wards scanning all of the library into a system.
>> Anybody know anything about fiche scanners.
> 
> 
>   This is exactly what my company does (and my previous, now defunct,
> employer as well).  I have dedicated microfiche and microfilm scanners.
> The problem I ran into when trying to scan my DEC microfiche collection was
> that the fiche themselves were of very poor quality.  Badly scratched and
> scuffed, and poor quality duplicates.
> 
>   Jim mentioned that dedicated microfilm scanners are expensive.  He's not
> kidding.  Used machines tend to start around $5k USD for a low end, heavily
> used scanner.  New machines are generally $30k at the lowest end.  Flatbed
> photographic film scanners are much cheaper, but also slower.  However,
> with some scripting and tools like the ImageMagick library, you can scan an
> entire fiche in one pass, then slice up the image into individual pages
> accordingly.
> 

many people have jousted at this particular windmill
this is a huge time-consuming project

I have literally thousands of sheets of DEC fiche from multiple sources

scanning at that kind of volume doesn't scale. you have to clean an qc every sheet
even with a production scanner. It took me most of a day to do the little bit of xxdp
fiche a couple of weeks ago on a manual positioning Canon microfilm/microfiche scanner
at CHM

I just bought another high-end scanner, which isn't running yet. It uses glass carriers
for each sheet and I have about 6 carriers.

I was hoping it could handle IBM punched-card sized fiche, but I've not been able to
find a carrier that big. I have a rather large backlog of those as well.