Scanning Microfilm Helps Researchers and Writers

A recent news story from Summerside (Prince Edward Island, Canada) revealed how a 74-year old former Air Force navigator searched through old newspapers and microfilm in a small back room at MacNaught History Centre and Archives.

Larry Gray is writing his fifth history book:

“I am very much a believer that history is very important. It’s very important to know where we’ve been and how did we get where we are now.”

Generation Imaging agrees, and that’s why we consider scanning microfilm is an important service to society. Scanning microfilm to create digital images has many benefits for historians, researchers, and writers. Images can be named by newspaper date and retrieved quickly. Better yet, images can be OCR’ed, so the user can type a word and have all the pages come up in the collection that have that word.

Microfilm scanning saves time. Scanning microfilm saves space. Roll film conversion is efficient. 35mm reel conversions allow easier ways to copy.

Although libraries are working on skeleton budgets, perhaps local governments and concerned citizens could raise money to see the benefit of scanning microfilm to create digital images.

Believe it or not scanning microfilm is not as expensive as one would think- it’s only a couple of cents per image. When you consider the relative low cost involved, ask yourself what should the price tag be to preserve history? Think of the positive impact roll film conversions have on society. Why do you think Google has taken upon itself to convert newspaper and magazine roll film to digital images online?