Materials and formats

Microfilming: Material and formats

OCLC Preservation Service Centers provide cost-effective, high-quality services with flexible options for the preservation reformatting of a wide variety of library and archive materials. Our carefully trained staff, state-of-the-art equipment, and material handling methods enable us to offer customized preservation microfilming services for both traditional and unusual materials and unique formats, including non-book formats, rare materials, oversized materials and unique items requiring special handling.

• Oversized materials
• Foldouts bound in books and other large format materials, such as maps and charts, are filmed in sections or in a single image on a large-bed camera at a high reduction. Our custom book cradles often eliminate the need for disbinding larger bound material, accommodating volumes with a height of up to 29 inches, open-book width of 51 inches, and thickness of 3.5 inches.
• Specialized items, such as large-scale engineering and architectural drawings and blueprints, can be filmed on our oversized flat-bed camera with back-lighting for greater legibility. Our Herrmann & Kraemer cameras, equipped with Zeiss lenses, capture superior detail even at higher reductions.
• Maps, posters and other large materials can also be filmed with our LogE Robertson full-frame fiche camera, one of only units in the U.S. Its 300mm Nikkor lens allows for high-quality filming of materials as large as 50" x 70" at reductions of 5:1 to 12:1. It can be used for high contrast, continuous tone, and color filming.
• Mixed formats and ephemera
  The degree of variety in manuscript collections, scrapbooks, and clipping files makes consistent densities and exposures difficult to achieve during filming. Our patented ExpoSure™ system uses objective measurements to determine precise exposure control, which results in consistent densities from frame to frame, regardless of the variety of paper types and degree of fade.
• Illustrated and color materials
  Preservation-quality continuous-tone and color microfilms are available for reformatting photographic materials, illustrated books, maps, or other film- or paper-based materials.
• Newspapers
  Newspapers present unique challenges for filming, including brittle newsprint, oversized pages and tight bindings, as well as illustrations and color images that require filming at appropriate densities to capture the best images. We can use special techniques to film brittle newspapers in two-sided mylar "envelopes," and, when permitted, can employ a variety of disbinding methods to capture text obscured by bindings.
• Bindings
  Fragile or tight bindings of artifactual value can be filmed with minimal binding distress on a camera that directs the light into the gutter rather than across it. This camera minimizes or even eliminates gutter shadow. All bound items are filmed using protective book cradles. We are also experienced in filming special paper types, such as fan-folded pages in East Asian books and letterpress printing; the latter have been filmed with backings to eliminate bleed-through.
• Languages
  In addition to Western languages in Roman alphabets, we have extensive experience filming materials in alphabets and languages that require special attention, including but not limited to Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), South Asian languages (Hindi and Urdu), and Southeast Asian languages (Burmese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Javanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese). Our technical staff is also trained in non-Arabic numbering systems and non-Western printing practices so they can ensure that materials are filmed in the proper order and orientation.

• Preservation Services