Dorsey MicroFilm (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

> Considering the advances in technology and lower equipment prices, it
> seems to me we should now be able to scan the film into tiff , GIF, JPEG,
> etc., files. I ordered "reverse images" on the films, i.e. black writing
> on white background (a whole lot easier to read). I've been shopping
> around eBay and the like for scanners but I really don't know enough about
> what is required.

My first answer to Tom's query is that I have noticed that Publishing
Perfection sells - or used to sell - haven't checked recently - something
called the PacficImage PrimeFilm 1800 AFL scanner, which scans 35 mm film
and has an automatic film loader that feeds 35 mm strips and rolled film.
It was $295 the last I looked.  I don't know what size rolls (not same as
reels?) it handles and, of course, microfilm is not 35 mm anyway.  I don't
know if such a device or something like it might suffice to scan microfim,
even rather laboriously with a lot of hand attendance and screen shot
adjustment.  I never got so far as to investigate this as at the moment -
now stretching out to several years - I don't really have the money to
pursue it if it would work!

My second answer is that I assume there is a company somewhere that will
do this, reducing the problem to one of copying CDs, but I don't know who
they are or if any of one or coalition of us can afford it.

Mark Swetland's solution was to buy a used microfim reader, and that may
be the best one.  That bracketed note about Mark's contributions to all
this in the posting of Tom's inquiry was me, by the way, not Tom.

I'm not sure how many CDs of images from 8 rolls of microfilm works out
to, by the way, but I suspect it is a fair number.  For the Dorsey OP slip
file alone, which I remember as an estimated 20K slips that is 20K images,
and if each image is 1 MB, just for the sake of argument, then we are
talking about 20 GB.  Looking at it another way, a CD holds about 600 MB
of data (along with indices, etc.).  That means 600 images on a CD, or 34
CDs.  And this is for the slip file.  It might make more sense to look at
DVDs, which hold much more, though I don't actually have a DVD reader at
present.  I think typical formats hold 2-5 GB of data, which reduces the
number of disks to 4-10.

Mark and Rory probably have a better handle on the numbers of images
involved.

The earlier approach to this that I thought of was to see if anyone was
interested in publishing the slips and grammar as is, xerographically.  I
had a suspicion the answer was "Not really," though, in a sense, something
like this is needed to do justice to the place of J.O. Dorsey in the
field.  I mean, they've done things like this for Bloomfield, a mere
Algonquianist when all is said and done (tongue firmly in cheek), even if
he did coincidentally publish a few general works of importance.  But in
Dorsey we're talking about the man who invented the term "second dative,"
after all!

JEK