VCF suggestions... (film vs digital)

[Tony Duell]

> 
> > and your comparison holds, with respect to people who are doing the
> > same thing in film-to-digital conversion with regard to Microfiche,
> > which have a long proven archival quality in comparison to the dubious
> > CDR/magnetic medium the data is converted to.
> 
> Going all the way digital, I don't feel so bad about.  Sure, the
> digital images may have some shortcomings, but the microfilm copies
> were already of borderline image quality in most places.  And

I don;'t think the loss of quality matters in these cases. Most people (I 
hestitate to say all) don't care if they can't see the exact details of 
the font used to print a technical manual, they just want to get the 
information out. You don't care about the thickness of the lines used on 
a schematic, you just need to know what's connected to what in order to 
fix the machine.

I think the main issue is that microfilm is likely to have a much longer 
useable life than any digital storage medium (and you won't convince me 
that putting something on the web will _necessarily_ preserve it, either).


> the big win is that 10 mirrors can get copies of the digitized
> microfilm and 100 people might download the digitized stuff from
> each mirror.  (Not that you can't duplicate microfilm, but...)

Of coruse makine the manuals available is a Good Thing. Nobody is 
disputing that. I just feel that if you scan microfilm, or paper, or... 
you should keep the originals, or pass them on to somebody who will 
preserve them. 

-tony