Writing digital images to preservation microfilm - a recipe for archival success

If you are currently scanning large numbers of historical documents or capturing digital photographs of artefacts in your collections then, because of the known problems of the long-term preservation of electronic files, you may wish to benefit from our digital-to-microfilm service. Here at Microform Imaging, using the AW-1 Archive Writer with its proprietary ArchiveImager software, we are able to take your digital images and documents in most common formats (JPEG, TIFF, PDF, DOC, BMP and XLS) and write them for you to bitonal, greyscale or colour 16mm or 35mm microfilm, including nesting multiple images in a single frame. What's more, if the volume of your digitisation projects justifies it, we can even sell you an archive writer of your own.

The pro's of digital images:

• Immediate retrieval
• Reduced storage space
• Ability to share

The con's of digital images:

• Not guaranteed to be compatible with future advances in technology.
• When transferring images to a new system you can loose up to 5% of the images during transfer.
• Susceptible to computer viruses.

The pro's of microfilm

• Guaranteed life expectancy of up to 500 years.
• Future proof format.
• Will always be able to be scanned to a digital medium.