A drawer of film can hold several different formats—and several different clues. Identify the carrier, understand the specific type, and plan digital access with the context intact.
Compare the families below. Then choose a format for a detailed identification and digitization guide.
These family names describe different physical carriers. The details beneath each family help establish what is in a collection before planning a scan or index.
Film held on a reel or within a carrier, arranged as a continuous sequence of images.
A flat sheet with a header and grid, or a transparent jacket carrier holding film strips in channels.
A card carrying a mounted microfilm frame, often used with drawing or engineering records.
14 specific guides
A 16 mm-wide strip of microfilm whose carrier, layout, polarity, reduction, and material are identified separately.
Identification & scanning guideA 35 mm-wide microfilm strip whose carrier, layout, polarity and material must be identified separately.
Identification & scanning guide
A microfilm cartridge encloses film wound on one hub in a protective container, typically with a free end for compatible equipment.
Identification & scanning guide
An enclosed microfilm carrier whose film travels between two internal cores instead of winding from a single hub.
Identification & scanning guideRoll microfilm with small rectangular optical marks in a dedicated channel used by compatible systems to count or locate image frames.
Identification & scanning guideSimplex film shows one page per recorded image area; duplex film shows a two-page image pair, while carrier, width, polarity, and material remain separate facts.
Identification & scanning guideA flat fiche on which original documents were photographed as separate frames in a planned row-and-column grid.
Identification & scanning guide
COM microfiche is a flat, grid-arranged microfiche whose images were recorded directly from computer output rather than photographed from paper documents.
Identification & scanning guide
A transparent jacket carrier holds separate cut microfilm strips in one or more channels rather than one fixed image grid.
Identification & scanning guide
A flat microfiche with a verified reduction ratio greater than 90:1 and a nonstandard grid pattern.
Identification & scanning guideAperture cards with a mounted microfilm image and punched tabulating positions that may encode retrieval metadata when a code map is available.
Identification & scanning guideAn unpunched aperture card has a mounted microfilm frame but no hole-coded metadata to decode, so identification begins with visible labels and related finding aids.
Identification & scanning guideIdentify polarity by whether readable lines and characters are dark on light or light on dark, then record it separately from carrier and other film attributes.
Identification & scanning guideRecord the image-forming material separately: silver halide is black-and-transparent, diazo forms a dye image, and vesicular uses heat-fixed bubbles.
Identification & scanning guideThese categories describe different attributes, not mutually exclusive boxes. A 16mm roll can also be negative, blipped or duplex. A fiche’s image source, carrier and reduction should be recorded separately.
Form, production method and reduction are different dimensions, so these descriptions are not all mutually exclusive. A sheet count is not a page count, and grids vary by collection.
A source document is reduced and placed frame by frame onto a fiche sheet. The header is retained separately from the image grid.
Computer-output microfiche records computer-generated reports to fiche. COM is not a bibliographic catalog by definition.
A jacket is a transparent carrier with separate cut strips in channels, not two fiche sealed together.
Ultrafiche is a high-reduction fiche format; it is not defined by card holes.
Width, carrier, layout and polarity answer different questions. Keeping them separate creates a clearer description of the material in front of you.
16mm and 35mm describe measured film width, not a paper size.
A cartridge has one hub; a cassette encloses two cores.
Simplex is one-up and duplex is two-up; this does not mean paper front and back.
Simplex and duplex guidePositive has dark text on a light background; negative reverses that relationship.
Positive and negative guideMarks can appear as distinct rectangles along a film edge. Their meaning is collection-specific.
Blipped film image marks guideYou don’t need a complete technical description to start. Preserve the labels and order you already have; we can discuss identification and sample-based planning with you.
Tell us what you have—even if you’re not sure. We’ll help define the next step.
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