Inside NIRMA Spring 2021

Defining Microfilm
“Production Scanner”
By Matt Anderson,
Vice President of Marketing, nextScan
L
ately there has been a lot of
talk about “Production”
scanners within the microfilm
market, but what does that actually
mean? According to Isausa, inc.
President Manuel Bulwa,
“Document capture industry experts
share a general consensus around the
concept of “Production” level status
as an elusive threshold that separates
low to high volume document
capture.” And by volume, that is
more than how many images per
minute, think a month. With that in
mind, we thought we would share
our professional opinion to help you
pinpoint key identifiers that
differentiate a production scanner
from an on-demand scanner.
Two Basic Kinds of
Microfilm Scanners
When you break it down, there
are two “classes” of microfilm
scanners:
• Production and
• On-Demand
Production
scanners are
machines that are
built using
sophisticated lighting and line-scan
sensors to convert microfilm to
digital format permanently, in one
scan. On-Demand scanners are the
devices equipped with area-scan
sensors that are employed to capture
images from microfilm on an “as
needed basis” - one image at a time.
Someone would not use a
Production scanner to scan one
image at a time, same as someone
would not use an On-Demand
scanner to convert an entire roll of
microfilm. These scanners have been
designed for two separate and
distinct processes.
Production level scanners are
designed from the ground up to
simultaneously transport and capture
high-resolution images on microfilm
or microfiche. Production scanners
are built with a highly specialized line
scanning image sensor, top-of-theline
lenses for greater focal depth,
and lighting technology that enables
high-speed digital conversion of the
media. This allows for the film, or
fiche, to be captured at the highest
resolutions while traveling at
extremely high speeds. Due to their
reliability, and image quality,
production scanners are always
favored by conversion service
bureaus, the document capture
experts that scan all sorts of
documents professionally.
On-Demand, also known as
research or walk-up microfilm
scanners, are designed to offer a
digital solution to replace the old and
outdated analog microfilm readerprinters.
The On-Demand scanners
are most popular with patrons of
libraries around the world, both in
public and university settings
because they are easy to use. The On
-Demand scanner is limited to still
image capture. These scanners are
equipped with a light source and
Complementary Metal Oxide
Semiconductor (CMOS) image
sensor like what you would find in a
digital camera, limiting the user to
capture each image on microfilm one
at a time.
Microfiche Scanning
Challenges
The flat, card-like style of
microfiche presents its own
Continued on next page.
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