Microfiche is a flat piece of transparent film that contains miniaturised versions of pages from a document. Typically, these can be journals, publications, newspapers or other types of records; any large quantity of materials that needs to be stored and archived. Microfiche requires specialised hardware that magnifies these slides so that they can be read.

The Microfiche format was invented in 1961 by Carl O. Carlson. It has an estimated life expectancy of up to 500 years (if stored correctly, and was manufactured using polyester-based as apposed to cellulose film), and was designed to be an efficient method of storing vast amounts of information. However, with modern digital technology, the format is now somewhat obsolete - and certainly impractical - because, as with any physical material, it still requires careful handling and storage.

Our scanning bureau can not only convert your microform archives, be they microfiche or microfilm (reel-based as opposed to flat sheets), into digital format, but also index all the information contained within.

As well as ensuring the longevity of the originals (since they will no longer be required for day-to-day browsing), converting and indexing them will make searching for information within the archives infinitely quicker. Words or phrases can be searched for, and relevant documents pulled up in a matter of seconds, rather than arduously scrolling and manually reading indexes.

Additionally, our digital archive solutions require no specialised hardware to be able to view or search through the content; any computer, smartphone or tablet device that supports Adobe’s ubiquitous Portable Document Format (PDF) will suffice. Furthermore, we can make the archive available online, thus enabling a wider audience.