Micro Fiche Library.

[Rod Smallwood]

On 04/10/2016 17:16, Al Kossow wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
>
Not a surprise.
I have a box; fiche size front and about two feet deep marked xxdp.
Perhaps we could avoid duplication of effort by knowing whats already 
been scanned.

The other issue is access to the scanned data.

I'm sure there are hardware hounds out there who could come up with cost 
effective  way to scan DEC 52x fiches.

Rod


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