In August 2024, Iron Mountain shared this article, sharing that following a survey of the thousands of archived Hard Disk Drives in their stores, 20% of them (a staggering one in five) have become unreadable. Whilst the article focuses on the music industry and the potential loss of audio recordings due to the obsolescence of their recorded file type, this is not an unfamiliar risk!
The march of progress
In today’s day and age, technology is advancing at a breakneck pace. Even in domestic use, we have gone from floppy disks to SSDs and cloud-based digital storage in the span of a couple of decades. Digital preservation, whilst useful, can sometimes fall short of being as permanent as we would like for this very reason. Expecting backwards compatibility with updated systems can be a risk, file formats can easily become obsolete, or the software to access them could be withdrawn from the market. Floppy discs and magnetic tape storage were vulnerable to ‘Bit Rot’. Some digital storage also requires online access in order to use it, which is great if your needs call for accessing your resources worldwide but can sometimes be at risk of cyberattacks or other digital threats.
Old but gold
Microfilm (And the flat version, microfiche) is a secure solution to these risks. Durable enough to last 500 years in the correct storage using ISO 18901:2010, They are non-electronic, non-magnetic, immune to electromagnetism, radioactivity and cyberattacks. Microfilm documents are human readable and can be easily scanned back into a digital management system for day-to-day access. This has the additional benefit of protecting the original from unnecessary handling and wear and tear. Microfilm as an analogue medium is perfect for documents and files that need keeping permanently such as Lease documents, Patent records, healthcare and National Insurance records, and a multitude more.
This reliability and security means that even though microfilm briefly fell out of vogue in the wake of digital methods, the advancement of microfilm technology means that it still has many varied applications in modern archiving. There is no need to have to deal with chemicals or manual photography. Now digital files can be written directly to a microfilm drive for automatic conversion of digital files into an analogue version on machine readable microfilm.
Protecting your archive for centuries
Each collection is unique, we understand that approaching the digitisation of your archive can be quite a daunting task, especially when it concerns items important enough to be committed to microfilm. However, there are a number of ways in which we can help you with advice and free consultancy for your specific requirements. No two microfilm scanning or writing projects are the same. Our free consultancy offers you the opportunity to be contacted by a digitisation specialist who can discuss your aims and determine the most fitting solution for your needs.
