Archival Research

National Archives, Library of Congress, NIH Library, FOIA & MDR

 Microfilms

Mirofilms

Microfilms are films that contain black and white micro-reproductions of records. They are usually stored on reels containing hundreds of images and are usually viewed amplified on a monitor or a specially-designed projector. 

There are two ways I can copy pages from microfilms quickly:

Digital photographs can be made from microfilm images projected onto a microfilm reader's monitor screen, but these usually require some post-photography processing in Photoshop Lightroom or another program before viewing or printing. These can later be converted to PDF or any other format and posted to a website for the client to download quickly.

Photocopies of varying quality can be made from the images on the monitor  using a machine with an attached photocopier at 50 cents per page. These can then be scanned at home with a flatbed scanner/feeder combo and then posted to the Internet.

By far, the best quality microfilm images are produced by digitizing microfilms directly on a machine specifically designed to do that - the output being stored to a thumb drive.  The Library of Congress has these devices available for use by researchers. The National Archives in College Park, Maryland possesses such devices - however, these machines are not made available to researchers for reasons that remain
unclear.

For a comparison between the results of digitally-copied, camera-copied and photocopied microfilms, please click here.

Unfortunately, microfilms at the National Archives can be digitized by that institution only.  The former involves copying the whole microfilm onto a on to DVD or another microfilm.  This provides the best images, which can be printed out on any computer/printer combination.  The drawbacks are that it costs the client over $100.00 per DVD copy. If the client has plenty of time and can identify the correct microfilm to be copied, this is by far the best option. A link to NARA microfilm order form can be found here.

The Library of Congress offers prints from microfilms, but it is a complicated process partially described here. In this case it may be better all around to photograph, photocopy or make digital copies of these microfilms as described above.

I can usually find and process records from microfilms to PDF files in a single day.