Microfiche scanning

[Patrick Finnegan]

Tom Jennings declared on Thursday 21 April 2005 11:41 pm:
> Sheesh, why is everyone treating fiche as a horrible thing? Like
> it's some terrible, embarrassing obsolete medium that needs to be
> converted out of as quickly as possible?
<snip>

Yeah, but there's at least two problems with it.

One, it's really hard to make fiche available to other people without 
scanning or giving out the original, and loaning out fiche is 
potentially risky and a pain in the ass to track.  Paper docs have 
similar problems, but it's easier to duplicate paper than microfiche, 
unless you can find a cheap microfiche -> paper duplicator.

Second, it's much easier - for me at least - to flip through a PDF than 
it is to flip through microfiche.  Right now, I don't have a fiche 
viewer at home (despite the DEC MDS fiche I now have) so I have to make 
a trip to the library to view it.  It's much easier to print out a few 
pages of a PDF (or all of it) and bring it with me to look at, than it 
is to haul around a microfiche reader... 

Pat
-- 
Purdue University ITAP/RCAC       --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge               --- http://computer-refuge.org