The Library of congress has a high
volume of microfiche and microfilm and is awarding a contract for a
company do digitize negatives from these microforms. According to the
federal business opportunity report, the process to digitize
negatives needs to be done at a high quality level. The purpose to
digitize these negatives by the Library Service Preservation Division
is to at least produce a digital file of the documents.
There are many reasons to believe that
digitize negatives will help. For one, digitize negatives will help
the library of congress offer better service in terms of providing
faster search alternatives. Then there is the issue of additional
preservation benefits. Digitize negatives can be duplicated endless
times and backed up for safety reasons. There are many other
associated benefits of digitize negatives from microfilm or
microfiche and the end users stand to gain from this.
As we move forward, I suspect that more
libraries will digitize negatives from microfiche or microfilm in
order to get their records into an electronic format. It only makes
sense from a practical view, that all of these institution digitize
negatives of archives that can only be found on microfilm at the
present time. In cases where cost has been an issue, we can digitize
negatives from microfilm, microfiche, aperture cards, and other
formats, for a very low microfilm price.
