Tag: com fiche

September 13, 2011

Reselling Microfiche Scanning Services

Reselling microfiche scanning services is an excellent way for your company, organization, or you to have access to a stream of revenue without investing in equipment, labor, office space, training, or liabilities. For example, let us say you work for a litigation company and one of your clients- in addition to needing documents converted to PDF- also has a collection of microfiche containing payroll records. Let us also assume that the set of fiche contains 1,000 cards.

It doesn’t make sense to perform the microfiche scanning on your own for the following reasons:

Cost. Why buy a new microfiche scanner for $65,000 to digitize something worth around $4,000?
Inferior scanners. There are scanners that are cheap (like $10,000) but what type of quality would you expect from low level camera technology?
Labor, training, workflow. Do you really want to incur money up front costs to expand your company just to handle 1000 COM fiche?

Anyway, after you spend some time investigating all of these options and have meetings about the feasibility of your company doing the microfiche scanning, you will realize that it is more efficient to outsource the microfiche scanning.

Since Generation Imaging is a wholesale service bureau you will get a below market conversion price, which will give you room to add on to the price to your end client, i.e. reselling the microfiche scanning service. After all you are the one responsible for taking care of your end client, you are taking the risk, and you will be the one servicing the end client.

Generation Imaging can be your silent partner for reselling microfiche scanning services, or if you totally don’t want to get involved you could simply have us go direct and we’ll give you a commission- it’s your choice.

July 29, 2011

Convert Microfiche vs Convert Microfilm

A mistake that occurs from clients or organizations who are not familiar with micrographics is mixing up microfiche and microfilm. Every industry or niche has its own lexicon, and in the micrographics industry there are major differences between microfiche and microfilm. The purpose of this article is to describe the differences between microfilm and microfiche.

Microfilm- It’s rolled.

In the most simplest terms, microfilm is rolled and microfiche is flat. Microfilm is also called roll film, and microfilm reels, microfilm rolls. Sometimes the width of the film is used to describe the types, such as 16mm roll film or 35mm microfilm.

Microfilm is usually stored in plastic or metal spools. Some old microfilm is stored in metal pans. Yes, microfilm generally looks like small versions of movie reel film, except without the classic sprockets.

Microfilm cartridges look different that the standard reel spools- but only on the outside. The film is enclosed in a hard metal square casing to protect it. Kodak and 3M were innovators in producing microfilm cartridges.

There is no such thing as a 35mm roll film cartridge; there are only 16mm microfilm cartridges.

The actual microfilm frame placement and types vary, such as duplex film, positive, negative, duo, fixed, blipped, variable, etc, however that is a different topic and is unrelated to identifying microfilm vs microfiche.

Microfiche- It’s flat.

A jacketed microfiche

Microfiche are flat “cards”, usually 4.13 x 5.83 inches, containing a few frames on them. Whereas a microfilm may hold 500 (35mm) to 20,000 frames (duplex), a microfiche card may hold as many one one frame to a couple of hundred (COM fiche).

Jacketed microfiche are simply roll film cut up into strips and inserted into plastic sleeves. Some people get confused if they don’t see the jacket sleeves, but it could be that the microfiche was duplicated. If it was duplicated, the copy may still have faint lines highlighting the border of the jackets. Since jackets are created from microfilm strips, they can come in the 16mm microfiche or 35mm microfiche varieties. A 16mm jacket has more rows and columns, and thus can hold more frames that a 35mm jacket (1-6 frames).

COM microfiche is computer generated and contain very small frames (usually with a 42x or 48x reduction ratio).

Step-and-repeat microfiche were created with a step-and-repeat camera. Many times they contain manuals or books and can hold hundreds of frames.

February 27, 2010

Microfiche Scanning

Microfiche scanning is possible with specialized equipment, such as NextScan microfiche scanners, Mekel scanners, Sunrise scanners, and others. Scanning microfiche on a flatbed scanner is not an option, and although you can use a reader printer, the time and labor invested is not an option, especially if you have many microfiche cards.

Generation Imaging is comprised of experts in converting microfiche to digital images. Over the years, G.I.’s production team has experience in performing different types of microfiche scanning projects from all over the United States, and has performed work for organizations from England (UK) , Mexico, Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Foundland, and other countries around the globe. GI prides itself on being open-minded to international microfiche scanning partnerships. We speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Visaya, and Tagalog.

Generation Imaging can digitize COM fiche, jacketed microfiche, 16mm microfiche, 35mm microfiche, step and repeat microfiche, rewritable microfiche, large format fiche, ultrafiche, and other types of microfiche. Generation Imaging’s microfiche scanning services can convert microfiche to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, and other file formats, such as a PDF/A OCR file. Additionally, GI provides image indexing and data entry.

If you are trying to win a government RFP bid that was listed on BidSynch or Onvia and come across a microfiche digitizing portion, we can assist you with a microfiche scanning quote and perform the service.

Whether microfiche digitizing is new to you, you have a microfiche bid opportunity, or if you are an experienced reseller, Generation Imaging can assist you with the microfiche conversion process, and explain the differences between COM fiche, 16mm jacketed microfiche, step and repeat fiche cards, 35mm jackets, and rewritable microfiche.

Please contact us for microfiche scanning pricing and turnaround times.