Heritage Microfilm, Inc. (est. 1997) is a
preservation microfilm and microfilm digitization business located in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is a city in Linn County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 137,710 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Iowa, second-most populous city in Iowa. The city lies o ...
.
History
The company began in 1996 when the microfilm division of Cedar Rapids-based Crest Information Technologies was sold to Christopher Gill. The microfilm division was responsible at the time for preserving newspapers and for microfilming business documents. The business document filming portion of the business was soon dropped in favor of the newspaper microfilming division. Crest in 1999 sold the remaining portion of the company to
Lason.
In 1999, Heritage Microfilm began digitizing newspaper microfilm and launched NewspaperArchive. Soon after, it began creating smaller "branded" newspaper archive websites in collaboration with publishing partners.
The firm works with
ANSI
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...
/AIIM standards for preservation microfilming. It has a humidity and temperature-controlled storage facility. It is a
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...
ImageGuard facility. One of its specializations is damaged microfilm recovery. It has an Extek 3441 microfilm duplicator, which duplicates at low speeds to prevent damage to
Redox
Redox ( , , reduction–oxidation or oxidation–reduction) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of the reactants change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is t ...
or
Vinegar-Syndrome microfilm. It uses Kodak
silver halide
A silver halide (or silver salt) is one of the chemical compounds that can form between the Chemical element, element silver (Ag) and one of the halogens. In particular, bromine (Br), chlorine (Cl), iodine (I) and fluorine (F) may each combine wit ...
microfilm for master film and primary duplications. It discontinued the use of
vesicular film for duplications, due to the poor quality film available from distributors. It claims to use Kodak BrownToner, a
polysulfide film treatment, on every reel of silver-halide microfilm that they produce.
NewspaperArchive
NewspaperArchive is a commercial online database of digitized newspapers launched in 1999 by Heritage Microfilm,
which claims to be the world's largest newspaper archive.
Criticism
In a 2005
Association of College and Research Libraries
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes library, libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world.
History 19th ...
paper, Bernard F. Reilly, Jr. expressed concern about the extent of Heritage Microfilm's involvement with stewardship of historical resources otherwise assumed to be held in the
public trust
The concept of public trust relates back to the origins of democratic government and its seminal idea that within the public lies the true power and future of a society; therefore, whatever ''trust'' citizens place in its officials must be respe ...
. Reilly wrote, "until 2002, the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
and the
Center for Research Libraries
The Center for Research Libraries (also known by its acronym, CRL) is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research library, research libraries, based on a buy-in concept for membership of the consortia. The con ...
regularly microfilmed the principal daily newspaper of Jamaica, ''The Gleaner''. In 2002 the
Gleaner Publishing Company executed an agreement with Heritage Microfilm, Inc. giving to the for-profit firm exclusive rights to reformat and distribute ''The Gleaner'', in both microform and digital format. Because Heritage now holds exclusive digital rights the agreement effectively shifts control of back files to the commercial sector, where it is marketed primarily for genealogists and family history researchers."
See also
*
Microdot
A microdot is text or an image substantially reduced in size to prevent detection by unintended recipients. Microdots are normally circular and around in diameter but can be made into different shapes and sizes and made from various materials s ...
*
Microphotograph
Microphotographs are photographs shrunk to microscopic scale.
*
Microprinting
Microprinting is the production of recognizable patterns or characters in a printed medium at a scale that typically requires magnification to read with the naked eye. To the unaided eye, the text may appear as a solid line. Attempts to reproduc ...
*
Newspapers.com
Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...
References
{{reflist
Online archives of the United States
Companies based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Companies established in 1997
Information technology companies of the United States
Photography companies of the United States
Digital preservation
Mass digitization
1997 establishments in Iowa
Newspaper companies of the United States