#CD-ROM or Micro-Fish
6 messages in this thread
My wife's office is considering micro filming all their records and getting
rid of them. I am wondering if CD-ROM would be a better way to go. It is
their finacial records, correspondance, etc. Would scanning and producing
their own CD-ROM be a viable and cost effective alternative?
If so, what is the projected equipment costs? Man Power costs? What is
the the learning curve?
Kevin:
Perhaps the biggest concern of companies in this situation is longterm
access to the information. At least if it's on microfiche, all you need is
a light source and a magnifying glass. Once encoded on a CDROM, you must
be assured of having computer-based access for a long time. Since fiche
lasts perhaps 50 years, then the company must be assured of having a
computer to read the pages for at least that long. The good news is, that
page scans are a very basic algorithmic problem, and no matter what the
computer of the future (or next week!) looks like, there should be no
problem reading the data. If, on the unlikely possibility that it looked
as though CD technology were disappearing, that data could easily be
written off digitally to another storage medium.
From a time and cost perspective, perhaps the greatest difference (if we're
talking about a lot of pages, as in most such archives), the time to snap a
picture is much less than the time to scan. On the other hand, the data
are in a much more malleable condition. I tend ot come down on the side of
digitizing where it makes sense. If the company wants to do the job twice,
they could film it now, and then digitize from the film later, once they
were comfortable with the technology.
Hope this helps — Rich Bowers
Rich,
Do fische really last 50 years? I've seen some that are 10 years old, and
they're brittle and faded to beat the band. And you didn't mention the
greatest benefit of all — if the documents are indexed (either with
mark-up or after OCR), they are electronically searchable. And having
rather poor eyesight, I consider the advantage of putting text in a
computer where I can blow up the text to the point of legibility a real
plus, too.
As far as the cost difference in scanning, isn't it necessary to scan or
photograph documents for micro-fische storage, too?
Kathy
Kathy:
Both micro-fiche and -film can have an expectancy of 40-50 years and more
with optimum storage conditions. But the word "optimum" can imply a lot.
And of course searchability is a major advantage of electronic forms. As
for "blowing up" the results (pun intended?), certainly you can do that
with fiche or film optically also. And for scanning, yes, the data have to
be captured in any case. But film is a photographic process accomplished
in a part of a second, as opposed to the slightly slower requirements of
electronic scanning (and the greatly longer process of OCR). The time
difference may be slight for a small project, but it can add up to a lot in
a large one. Plus you must consider that the "indexing" of page images –
in wither case – must be done, at least to some extent, manually, adding
additional time requirement.
I am not an advocate of film particularly, but I think it only fair to lay
out some of the positive and negative attributes of both approaches to give
the company the best shot of finding the optimal solution in their specific
context. Certainly, it seems that the electronic scheme is gaining ground
all over the map.
Best — Rich Bowers
Rich,
I applaud your wanting to lay out all the facts so people can find the best
solution for their needs. I just think there's more to it than time to
capture the images (and I think scanning & OCR can be done just as quickly
as photography if advanced equipment and software are used — I have an
associate here who does some really impressive things with his high-speed,
high-res scanner & OCR tools). What really needs to be done is a
one-on-one comparison of the techniques, on a variety of subjects.
Benchmarks, anyone? I wonder if anyone will be doing anything like that at
INFOCOM next month? Do you know? Are you going? Shogo, Lawrence & I are
planning to go for at least a day or two to see what's new.
Kathy
Kathy:
You're right, there is much more to it than the time to capture the data.
I hope I didn't imply that the decision hung exclusively on that point.
But it is significant. BTW, I'm curious to hear about your experiences
with OCR, especially on large projects. In my experience, keyboarding can
often be as inexpensive and effective in the long run as OCR, particularly
for data that includes lots of numbers (comparing the total cost of
scanning, proffing and editing). Still true?
No I'm not going to Infocom, but I'd love to hear your impressions!
Best – Rich