Scanning News Articles
Document management moving forward as Microfilm is accessible remotely in more libraries
Date: 07/05/2008
The Louisiana State library (LSU) has installed a digital microfilm reader that offers remote access over the Internet, transfer images and save files on disk.
The ST200 digital microfilm readers enable users to burn any images to a CD or save them to a flash drive while also being able to email an image to themselves and even log on remotely to gain access from home.
The only flip side of the coin is that staff at the library would still have to load the microfilm for you, however this may change again for libraries in the near future with microfilm scanning. But once it's loaded you can actually view, zoom, email and print straight from the loaded microfilm as if it were stored on a network. This process makes it easier for library staff to serve users more quickly as physically scanning through microfilm can be a time consuming job, as most users of this storage method will know.
There are many similar machines around without the remote access and still work pretty well so It looks like the remote access technology is quite new in these environments, but at least more libraries have already followed suit. There are still question marks over how well it would work nationally. What if the film reel accidentally runs off the roll it’d be quite frustrating if it was a few hundred miles away. It is still a step forward from physically searching through a roll but the next step (which could take some large outsourcing) is to have the microfilm electronically scanned which would free up library staff time even more and help remote access if the files are available on a network or online all the time.
Hopefully, more libraries and other repositories with large microfilm collections will be adding remote access microfilm readers or microfilm scanning – even more so to those which already have the ST200 reader. They would only need to purchase the add-on remote access component. Or simply they could use document scanning services to convert all of their films to electronic files. Now that’s the way forward for remote access.
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