[WEB4LIB] Converting Microfiche and Hardcopy to electronic form

[Gary E. Masters]

The documents are pretty standard to convert.  A good scanner will do the
job.  I recommend 300 dpi or better and if doing it myself would look at
600 dpi and higher, especially for engineering drawings.  the best bet is
to do a test of every type of image you can determine is in the collection.
 I keep up with a magazine called Imaging and document solutions
(www.imagingmagazine.com) that covers software, hardware and lots of hints
for processes and procedures.  As for the microfiche, we have a microform
reader with a capture card that sends TIF images to a computer.  However,
we have not done much with it.  The problem is finding the people to do the
work.  If that is not a problem, you may want to do the work yourself.  if
you don't have enough to make the hardware worth it, I suggest a service
agency to do the conversion for you.  The cost (if not indexed) is rom five
to ten cents per page.  

The most important aspect of a project like this is quality control.  I
have seen several good projects that did well in the first stages fail
because there were too many errors later on.  You HAVE to know which image
is in every file.  Image quality is also important.  

This is just a sketch.  Get the magazine and follow up on things that
interest you.

With storage and workstations at the price they are now, it should be
something that can be done.  Just make sure that you have a reason to have
these records in digital format and know how to use it when the project is
done.  This is also important.


Wrrite driectly if you have quesions not answered.  


Regards,

Gary Masters






At 02:26 AM 6/14/99 -0700, M.A.Khan wrote:
>We have a good collection of reports in the area of aerospace and
>allied sciences in the form of Microfiche and hardcopy.  We would
>like to convert them into electronic form and made is accessible 
>through intranet to our end users.
>
>I would like to know if any library has taken up this type of work
>of converting both microfiche and hardcopy into electronic form.  If so,
>please let me know the methodology and the infrastructure require for
>the conversion. 
>
>Mumtaz Ahmed Khan
>Scientist
>Information Centre for Aerospace Science and Technology
>National Aerospace Laboratories
>Airport Road
>Bangalore - 560 017
>
>Phone : 080-5086082
>
>
>
Gary E. Masters
Automated Services Librarian
Texas A&M International University
(956) 326-2137 (voice)
(956) 326-2399 (fax)