Digitizing Microfilm

Microfilm-Specific Resources

• Guidelines for Newspaper Preservation Microfilming (external link) (IFLA Professional Reports, NuMBer 49) (PDF, 1.43MB)
• Guidelines for Microfilming to Support Digitization (external link) (PDF, 1.0MB)
• Microfilming for Digitisation and Optical Character Recognition, Supplement to Guidelines (external link) (via Newspapers Section (IFLANet)
• Preliminary Results of Investigation to Optimize Microfilm for Digitization (external link) (PDF, 323KB)
• Digital Imaging and Preservation Microfilm: The Future of the Hybrid Approach for the Preservation of Brittle Books (external link) by Stephen Chapman, Paul Conway, and Anne Kenney (via RLG DigiNews: Volume 3, NuMBer 1)
• FAQ-Microfilm Scanning (external link) (via RLG DigiNews: Volume 5, NuMBer 3)
• Quick and Dirty Guide to Microfilm Digitization Companies (external link) (via SLA News Division)
• Digitizing Historic Newspapers: Progress and Prospects (external link) by Marilyn Deegan, Emil Steinvel, Edmund King (via RLG DigiNews, Volume 6, NuMBer 4, [August 15, 2002])
• Language And Media Processing (LAMP) (external link) (via University of Maryland, College Park)
• The Current State-of-art in Newspaper Digitization A Market Perspective (external link) by Edwin Klijn (via D-Lib Magazine, Volume 14 NuMBer 1/2 [January/February 2008])

General Digitization Resources

• Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative
• Recommendations for the Evaluation of Digital Images
• Moving Theory into Practice : Digital Imaging Tutorial (external link)(via Cornell University)
• Scoping the Future of Oxford's Digital Collections - Appendix E: Digitization (external link) (via Oxford University)
• Creating a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections (external link) by Timothy W. Cole
  (via First Monday, volume 7, number 5 [May 2002])
• Digital Preservation and Deep Infrastructure (external link) by Stewart Granger (via D-Lib, volume 8, number 2 [February 2002])
• Why Digitize (external link) by Abby Smith (via Council on Library and Information Resources)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

• Going Grey? Comparing the OCR Accuracy Levels of Bitonal and Greyscale Images (external link) by Tracy Powell and Gordon Paynter (via D-Lib Magazine, Volume 15 NuMBer 3/4 [March/April 2009])
• Analysing and Improving OCR Accuracy in Large Scale Historic Newspaper Digitisation Programs (external link) by Rose Holley (via D-Lib Magazine, Volume 15 NuMBer 3/4 [March/April 2009])
• Microfilm, Paper and OCR: Issues in Newspaper Digitization (external link) by Kenning Arlitsch and John Herbert (PDF, 3.55MB)
• ALTO (Analyzed Layout Text Object) - Technical Metadata for Optical Character Recognition

Also see Metadata Resources

To view PDFs

Last Updated: 05/17/2018