Microfilm Archives

Articles Tagged with: Microfilm

February 3, 2023

Top 5 Reasons to Digitize Your Microfilm

Microfilm is a form of film technology that uses photographic methods to store documents, images and other materials in a very small format. Before the advent of affordable digital technology, microfilm and microfiche were your best option for compact information storage. After digital computing exploded onto the scene in the 90s, however, it quickly became a better option in every way.

In this article, we’ll break down the top 5 advantages of digital that caused this quick change; benefits which you can still leverage by digitizing your microfilm today.

5 – Storability

Digital files are, quite simply, much easier to store than microfilm. You can keep them on your hard drive or in the cloud, with virtually no physical space needed to contain them. This is especially useful for large organizations and institutions that may have hundreds of microfilm reels with thousands of documents stored on them.

For many organizations, converting their paper files to microfilm or microfiche formats was a decision originally made to save storage space. A single reel of compact microfilm can hold over 40,000 page-images in a space the size of a hockey puck, and a sheet of microfiche can store dozens of page-images in a sheet only a few inches wide.

Both are far more space-efficient than paper, but neither has anywhere near the storage efficiency of digital. A single-terabyte hard drive, which takes up about as much space as a microfilm reel, if not less, can hold over 83,300,000 pages of text. That’s the equivalent of over 2,000 microfilm reels in as much or less space as is taken up by just one.

If you choose to use cloud storage instead of keeping your files on your own hard drives, the amount of space you need to commit to information storage goes from very little to absolutely none. Fast, reliable, and secure internet connections make cloud storage a practical option for anyone, regardless of how much or how little they need to store.

4 – Flexibility

Digital files are more flexible than microfilm in that they are much easier to search, manipulate and use in different contexts. You can edit them directly or extract images from them with ease, as well as convert them into other file formats. This means you can store your documents in a variety of ways and use them for multiple purposes.

With microfilm or microfiche, on the other hand, it is much more difficult to manipulate or search through the content. The best way to access information stored in this format is by manually scrolling through frame-by-frame with a magnifying device.

Digital files, on the other hand, can be easily searched with keywords or phrases and quickly accessed from any device connected to the internet. This makes it much easier for you to access and share content in a wide variety of ways.

3 – Accessibility

Another huge benefit of digitizing your microfilm is enhanced accessibility. By storing your documents in a digital format, you can access them from anywhere with an internet connection, at any time of day or night, without needing to physically locate the materials.

This accessibility also means that multiple people within an organization can easily access and view the same piece of information at the same time, which is much more difficult to do with microfilm or microfiche.

Additionally, anytime you access your microfilm records, you are most likely exposing them to environmental conditions that will accelerate their decay. That’s not to say that you don’t know what you’re doing. Rather, over a multi-decade timespan, microfilm is quite delicate. Everything from warm temperatures to humidity, to the natural oils on your skin, to the type of material they’re stored within, and even the kind of paint on the walls of the room you’re handling them in will all contribute to their chemical decay unless they’re just right.

Digital files, on the other hand, can be accessed as many times as you need with an extremely low risk of causing damage. Even then, on the off chance that a file gets corrupted or distorted, most software includes recovery options, and creating backup copies is quick, easy, and free.

2 – Use of Digital Tools

The use of digital tools is yet another big advantage that comes with digitizing microfilm. With these new tools, you can conduct advanced analytics on your data and gain valuable insight into the information stored in your documents. This allows you to make better decisions and improve operations in your business or organization.

You can also use digital tools to create interactive visualizations from your data that are more engaging and adjustable than paper equivalents.

1 – Preservation

Today, most microfilm archives are beginning to disappear. The unstable chemical composition of microfilm requires very specific storage conditions. Over 20-40 years of storage, most microfilm collections have been exposed to unfavourable conditions, often enough to kick-off chemical feedback loops that will inevitably result in the complete degradation of the information contained within.

With many microfilm archives being created as many as 50 years ago, you likely weren’t involved in the decision to begin making them. Whether or not you know what your organization’s microfilm archives contain, you can pretty safely assume that the information within is valuable enough to be worth storing. Bringing that information into the digital world rescues it from an otherwise inevitable death in the decaying medium of microfilm.

In conclusion, digitizing microfilm and microfiche reels offers a multitude of advantages over traditional storage methods. The most important benefit is preservation – storing your documents in digital format ensures they won’t degrade or become lost while also providing enhanced accessibility to the information stored within. Additionally, digitization allows you to use powerful digital tools for analytics and visualizations that weren’t possible before. Finally, it provides flexibility by allowing you to store files in multiple formats and access them from anywhere with an internet connection. These benefits make digitizing your microfilm archives an easy decision for any business or organization looking to protect their valuable data long-term.

Consentia has been transforming information for over 50 years, and before the advent of digital technology, handling and converting microfilm was one of our specialties. With decades of experience with both film and digital formats, you can trust that your microfilm will be safe with us, and that the digital copies we provide will be of the highest quality possible.

Get in touch with one of our digitization experts today to learn more, or request a quote on our website.

July 1, 2022

Microfilm: Should you (still) be using it? Part 2

In the previous post, we went over some of the vulnerabilities of microfilm; both physical vulnerability and its vulnerability as an information system. In this part, we’ll cover the ways that you can protect your microfilm from decay if you decide to keep it. We’ll also compare it to digital in case you’re thinking about converting your film into digital files.

Part 2 – How to Prevent Microfilm Decay

Environmental Controls: Comprehensive environmental control, including temperature, humidity, light, and air quality, are essential for preventing most forms of damage and decay.
1. Temperature: should be kept between 0 C and 18 C; the lower, the better.
2. Humidity: should be kept as low as possible; below 50% at least, ideally below 25%.
3. Air Quality: should be filtered and regularly assessed for airborne pollutants that will damage the film.
4. Light: light should be kept to a minimum, and the film should never get any direct sunlight.
Handling Precautions: Anytime you use a film for reference, you risk damaging it or accelerating its decay.
1. Don’t: ideally, you should never handle a film after it’s been moved to long-term storage. No matter how strict or comprehensive your precautions are, there is no way to totally eliminate the risk of starting a decay process in a film. Any kind of handling should be minimized as much as possible
2. Working Copies: a film which is likely to be used for reference more than a few times a century should have working copies and preservation copies so that damage/decay caused by handling can be limited.
3. Temperature: before handling a film, the temperature in the storage room should be increased gradually up to comfortable temperatures so that no condensation develops
4. PPE, but not for you: oils on your skin and moisture from your breath or sweat can affect your films whenever you’re handling them, so it’s best to wear a mask and gloves.
Other storage precautions:
1. Curate Room Materials: ensure none of the materials in the room are corrosive or acidic in any way. This includes the paint on the walls and cabinets and the material that the cabinets and storage boxes are made out of.
  - Cabinets & Boxes: should be made out of metal or high-quality plastic, not wood or cardboard. Wood products tend to release small amounts of acid and moisture into the air over their life spans.
  - Paint: If the walls in your storage room are painted, ensure that it’s at least three months old, as this is the amount of time it takes for even dry paint to stop releasing pollutant chemicals into the air.
2. Store Individually: due to the risk of contagious deterioration, like acetate decay, it’s best to isolate each reel or batch of fiche into its own airtight container. This way, decay or damage in any one item can’t spread to the others surrounding it.
3. Do Not Stack: Though the reels and plastic sheets may seem physically resilient and sturdy, they should not be stored in any way which puts excess weight on them, like stacking on the same shelf. In long-term storage, the lightweight of other reels above them has enough time to warp and disfigure films at the bottom of a stack.
4. Check Regularly: Despite minimal handling being ideal, the subtle and insidious ways in which film deteriorates means that storing your films and forgetting about them until you need them is not an option. Regular check-ups for acidity, air quality, and other risks are necessary to catch deterioration problems early.
  - If your organization is able to afford ideal environmental controls (i.e. nearly 0% humidity, refrigerator temperatures, high-quality air filters, airtight individual packaging, etc.), deterioration is less likely to start and will progress more slowly if it does. You won’t need to check on them as often.
  - If your organization cannot afford ideal environmental and storage conditions, you’ll need to check up on the films more often. Lower temperatures and humidity levels make problems like mould and oxidization less likely, but they can still develop in non-ideal conditions.

Recall the claim made by microform enthusiasts that it can last for 500 years. Though the (relative) recency of their invention prevents us from having evidence of any films lasting this long, it may turn out to be true. But given the recommended storage precautions, the only way this 500-year mark seems achievable would be to lock your films away in a dark, airtight refrigerator underground, rarely checked at all and only handled by meticulous, masked and gloved film experts, and never used. If your organization is a well-funded national archive, then that probably doesn’t sound too bad. If you’re almost anyone else, these kinds of precautions probably just aren’t practical.

So then, why would anyone ever use film?

Paper has a proven, not theoretical, shelf life of nearly 2000 years when well maintained, and digital is far more compact and efficient. If the main advantages of microfilm are compact information storage and longevity, aren’t these advantages completely surpassed by a combination of paper and digital?

The answer is that microfilm strikes a balance between reliability, storage efficiency, and longevity, which makes it perfect for archival purposes.

Even a poorly managed film library will last a few decades, which is much longer than digital’s 2-5 year maximum on unplugged digital storage. A well-maintained library may or may not actually last the full 500 years, but there are archives with films created in the 19th century still in good condition, eons compared to digital.

Storage efficiency. Even though digital is more compact than both of them, microfilm really is a lot more compact than paper. In a previous post, we illustrated the efficiency of digital by comparing a single terabyte hard drive, which can store 83 million pages of text, to the size of the stack that much paper would create. If we do the same thought experiment with a microfilm reel, and we pick a high-capacity variety (i.e. 215’ long, dual channel), it can contain over 10,000 images. That’s nothing compared to digital’s 83,000,000 in a terabyte, but 10,000 sheets of paper (if 0.1mm thick) is still a 1-meter tall stack that’s being compressed to a space roughly the size of a hard drive. Multiply that storage ratio across the millions of documents stored by archives and libraries, and you’re saving an enormous amount of space by using film instead of paper.

Rare duplication. Every time you duplicate a file there’s a chance of losing information to corruption, whether that’s an imperfection on a filming table or a photocopier or a bad digital read. Even if a film library needs to be refilmed every 30 years (which is a short time compared to a well-maintained library), that’s still many fewer chances for a bad copy than digital.

Legal reliability. Film is often considered more legally reliable than digital, which also makes it more valuable for archives. Digital information is more and more reliable every year as the technology for copying files continues to improve, but file corruption does still happen. It’s also much easier to secretly tamper with a digital record than a film record, which gives law courts a reasonable skepticism with digital records admitted as evidence. However, built-in metadata systems are improving many courts’ opinions on digital records.

Unlikely target for theft. One of the main disadvantages of film is its inaccessibility; it can take a long time to navigate a physical library of reels to find the exact record you’re looking for, and then scroll through a reel hundreds of feet long until you find the specific document you’re looking for.

The silver lining of this disadvantage, however, is that information thieves are much less likely to target a film archive. Compared to digital information theft, which can be done instantly and remotely if you’ve got the technical aptitude, stealing information from a film archive would involve breaking into a secure facility, spending hours searching through the directory and scrolling the film, and then getting back out before law enforcement can surround the facility.

So then should you (still) be using microfilm?

That depends on a number of factors, but in general, probably not. The key function of microfilms, the need which they meet better than any available alternatives, is the reliable, compact, long-term storage of large volumes of legally sensitive documents. Archives and libraries tend to still use microfilm because they have enormous volumes of information in their collections, and much of it is often legally significant or confidential. These files also don’t need to be referenced often and need to be as reliable and authentic as possible.

For almost any other organization, microfilm is just not a cost-effective information system. The value it offers is hyper-secure, mass storage of important files that don’t need to be accessed very often. For any business or organization active in the ever-shifting modern economy, an important file that you don’t have rapid access to is a potential risk. Digital alternatives like isolated servers might not be quite as secure as a microfilm vault, but that level of security is well beyond most organizations’ needs and comes with the cost of very slow access times, often multiple hours, sometimes days.

Should you digitize your microfilm?

Almost certainly. Again, unless you’re an archive, you probably want to have rapid access to any file important enough to keep secure. That’s not something microfilm can offer. Beyond that, digital files are far easier to duplicate, making the longevity of a microfilm reel over a hard-drive something of a moot point. A hard drive can last more than a decade, and the information on it can be transferred to a new drive so quickly that the cost in both money and time is negligible.

Digitizing your films has the potential to backfire if it’s not done properly, however. Anytime you take your films out of storage, you risk beginning or accelerating some form of decay, so digitizing once takes time off their shelf-life. If all the information is converted over perfectly, then this isn’t a problem; but if anything needs to get redone, it will accelerate the decay of those files even further. Additionally, any time files of any kind are handled, there’s a small chance of more conventional damage like ripping, tearing, bending, or water damage; so it’s important to make sure your files are well taken care of.

Consentia has been working with microfilm files for decades, and our film specialists know how delicate and important your files are. For secure, reliable, high-quality digitization services, choose Consentia.

June 24, 2022

Microfilm: Should you (still) be using it? – Part 1

First developed in the 19th century, microfilm technologies (a.k.a “microforms”) store tiny, accurate images that can be scaled up to a readable size with only a light and some magnification. A microfilm reel can store thousands of images in a small space. Thinner, more accessible sheets of microfiche hold 80 images in a space smaller than half a page of paper. These options allow for very compact information storage compared to full paper documents, and as a result, they came into widespread use throughout the 20th century, especially in libraries and archives.

Today though, microforms are commonly considered relics from a bygone era; before the days of digital computers and the internet. New microfilms are exceedingly rare, most date back to the late 1990s or before, usually long-term records stowed away in libraries and archives. Once digital information systems became widely available, the once-revolutionary technology very quickly fell into obscurity and disuse. Despite having many advantages over paper, microfilm could not hope to keep up with digital’s efficiency, speed, and flexibility; and computers have only become more powerful and available since then.

Part 1 – Understanding Microfilm Decay

One of the primary advantages commonly credited to microforms is their longevity. Authors, archives, and microform companies have pointed out that, theoretically, microfilms should last as long as 500 years, so long as they’re stored “properly.” That may sound pretty straightforward; if something is important enough to include in a record, it’s probably not something you want to risk losing by improper care.

It’s worth noting, however, that microfilms haven’t been around long enough to confirm that projection, and yet many microform libraries have already deteriorated, some of them only a few decades old. These impressive, theoretical claims aren’t necessarily inaccurate, but they do implicitly obscure the two primary drawbacks of microforms: they’re delicate and hard to replace.

Delicacy – Decay

At first glance, microfilms do not appear exceptionally delicate. Even after a decade in storage, a microfilm reel can still survive being dropped or shaken, and boxes of reels, probably don’t require “FRAGILE” labels (unless, of course, they are very old). By “delicate,” then, we mean that longevity anywhere close to 500 years requires expensive and precise environmental controls, meticulous care, and consistent handling protocols. They’re not exceptionally delicate in the here and now, but living up to the claim is a delicate and difficult process.

Microfilms degrade in a number of ways, including (but not limited to) Acetate Decay, Redox, and Embrittlement. Following proper storage protocols and precautions can prevent all of these from happening to your films, but as you’ll see, such preventative measures are very complex, and often more expensive than other alternatives. Every individual aspect contributing to that complexity is another way for mistakes to be made that could compromise your films.

Types of Film Decay: Causes & Solutions

Problem 1 – Acetate Decay (a.k.a “Vinegar Syndrome”)

When the acetate compounds in your film start to decay, they turn into acetic acid, which gives off a distinctive vinegar smell. Not only is the breakdown of the acetate compounds a form of damage in and of itself, the product of that decay, acetic acid, then goes on to continuously damage the other components of the film. The results can include delamination, anti-halation colour distortions, plasticizer exudation, shrinkage, and fading dye (if your film is in color).

According to Craig Saper, a professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County writing for The Atlantic, back when microfilms were more ubiquitous, Vinegar Syndrome was so common that “…librarians and researchers sometimes joked about salad being made in the periodical rooms.”

Cause – Airborne Contaminants

Exposure to pollutants and moisture in the air causes the acetate compounds to break down, producing acetic acid. The reaction isn’t instantaneous, of course, but without strict air quality and humidity controls, every time a film is outside of an airtight container there’s a chance it will begin or accelerate the acetate decay.

Additionally, the fumes released by the acetic acid as it eats away at one film can spread through the air to kick off the same reaction in another film sitting next to it. If there are any leaks in your air-tight containers, this contagious problem could potentially spread from one film to an entire collection.

Solution – Re-filming or Digitizing

Acetate decay isn’t inevitable, but it is irreversible, and once it sets in your film has only a short time before it’s completely unusable. Any information not saved by creating new copies will be lost forever as the film begins to curl and the images decay.

Creating film copies of documents for the first time is time-consuming and expensive. Creating duplicates of older films is a little easier since you won’t have to process all of the original paper documents, just the condensed reel form; thus, duplicating damaged films should be cheaper than creating new ones.

However, you are still physically creating a new film, so duplicating isn’t as simple or as cheap as it might sound. You also have to ensure that the new film has minimal exposure to the old film during the duplication process, or else the fumes released by the acetic acid could start the process all over again in your new copies.

Alternatively, you could decide to digitize these decaying files, turning them into PDFs or images instead. Processing a large number of film reels or fiche sheets can be time-consuming and expensive, but there’s no risk of further film decay with the end product, and it has the added benefit of making all that information compatible with digital information systems, and thus, with the rest of the world’s systems.

Problem 2 – Redox

Silver is a common component in the chemical soup used to create microfilm, and when it’s exposed to moisture in the air, it tends to oxidize, turning into red or orange splotches on the film. These patches can obscure important information on the microimages and once it’s set in they can’t all be removed.

Solution – Kodak Brown Toner

Unlike Vinegar Syndrome, refilming might not be the best solution. Once the silver spots have developed, the fact that they’re opaque means that any copy images will have black splotches where the silver obscured the light shining through the original film. Instead, painting Kodak’s brown toner onto the film can clear up the newest blemishes, and prevent more from developing. If you catch the problem early, applying the toner can prevent it from ever being a problem in the future, and save you from the cost of re-filming. But most spots are there to stay once they’ve developed, and if you don’t catch the problem early, there’ll be no way to recover the lost information.

Problem 3 – Embrittlement

Exposure to heat, moisture, or acidic pollutants in the air or storage containers all cause the gradual decay of the plastics that compose the base of the film. As the plastics deteriorate, they release acids that can further damage the film. The result is brittle, inelastic film that can’t bend or twist without breaking or flaking apart.

If your microfilm is stored on reels, then you won’t be able to unroll it without causing irreparable damage to it. If your microfilm is in the less common fiche form, you might be able to scan or refine it as is, but the further along embrittlement is allowed to progress, the more delicate the fiche cards in your sheets will become, making them vulnerable to the slightest twists and bends.

Solution – Elasticity Solvents and Refilming

Although in the long run, embrittlement is irreversible, it is temporarily reversible if treated with solvents which return some degree of strength and elasticity to the film, for a little while. If done correctly, you can give your film enough elasticity to safely create copies. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the further an embrittlement problem advances, the less useful these solvents will be, and the less likely you are to be able to save your information; so it’s important to check up on your film regularly to screen for decay.

These are only a few of the ways your film records could decay, other problems include distortion/warping, decomposition of the gelatin base, silver fading or mirroring, and mould or fungus growth.

Duplication – Rarity

The other drawback of microfilm is the difficulty of duplication. The technology and expertise to create new microfilms have existed for decades and are still widespread. However, the market dominance of digital technology means that most film creation businesses have withered away, or have had to move on to other business models. The few that remain are usually the only service providers in their local area or have very little competition.

Low competition means that you are stuck with whatever filming businesses are available locally; if they do a good job, then great, but if they don’t they’re still your only option unless you’re comfortable shipping your films several hours drive away to another business you trust more. Limited options also means little to no redundancy: if a filming shop in your area goes out of business or is waiting on rare replacement parts for some of their old machinery, you’ll be out of luck.

In part 2, we’ll review the preventative measures recommended by experts to keep your microfilm viable for as long as possible, and attempt to answer the central question: Should you (still) be using microfilm?