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Summary: Filmless microfilm station?



Thanks to all of you who responded to my inquiry on this subject.
Apparently the type of operation I had in mind cannot currently be done with
standard affordable off-the-shelf hardware and software.  Various approaches
were suggested, but all of them are very expensive.  I'd be happy to discuss
the details with anyone who's interested.

Some responses indicated that my original posting was unclear, so I'd like
to briefly restate the concept:  Our 35-mm reels contain about 1400 pages of
newsprint apiece, and each page measures 21-by-13 inches.  Therefore the
reel can be thought of as a single 21-by-18200 inch image.  I want to
digitize that single image onto a file on my hard drive and use software to
pan and zoom around on it, with controls very much like what are found on a
standard microfilm reader. The compressed file should take no more than 2
gigabytes, so 40 reels or more should fit per 80-GB drive, which currently
cost $160 apiece. The system should allow us to insert "bookmarks"
indicating where each date's issue starts (in terms of filename and pan
parameters), so that a user can go directly to any day's issue.  I'd also
like to experiment with OCR-generated indexes, but that's a secondary issue.

Are there any technical obstacles in doing this?  I'd think that a microfilm
scanner would actually be simpler than a paper document scanner, since it
would not require a moving light source.  One person mentioned the issue of
backing up such a large disk storage, but in this case the microfilms would
provide a backup.  The affected reels could be reloaded after any failure.
Copyright problems?  I don't know, but feel there shouldn't be.

Sorry to have taken up so much bandwidth here, but I think a "filmless"
operation would be vastly superior, not only for our own small organization,
but for many others as well.  I'm surprised that it's not a standard and
common option.  With thanks for your patience...

- Jim Roberts

James N. Roberts
Ridgefield, Connecticut
<jroberts@ct1.nai.net>

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