[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by vr1967

You can still copy or make new microfiche, as I’m still having to get soldiers records / information that way from the archives, but why not just digitize it? That way it is saved for posterity.

....

Originally Posted by gtoric

Let's look at the numbers.
Pontiac built nearly seven million vehicles between 1961 and 1970. At 10 cents per image, that works out to nearly $700,000. If you expand the year count to 1980, you will more than double that figure.

If you could image each Billing History Card or Dealer Invoice at the rate of one per second, it would take one person, working 40 true hours per week, almost a year to complete the image recording. If the actual rate increased to 2 or 3 seconds per image, that would turn out to be a substantially lengthy effort.

Now that you've got that first decade digitized, you can start figuring the cost/time requirement for the OCR phase.

This has always figured as a massive project in time and money. Until the reader/printer that PHS is using at the moment has a fatal breakdown and no repair parts can be located, thus rendering the existing microfilm cassettes useless in their current form, there is no reason for PHS to venture away from the satus quo. However, if or when that unfortunate turn of events comes about, PHS will have a decision to make, but, it is their decision to make.

Originally Posted by gtoric

Yep, I agree with you Kurt, this post has offered some good discussions on how the PHS records could be utilized in the digital environment. Just think what a Pontiac-based, not-for-profit organization could do with that theoretical $700,000 (or even $70,000) and the PHS microfilm library. We've explored just some of the possibilities thus far.

I also agree that this is a intriguing exercise in "what-if" business building. I was just trying to further illustrate the scope of the proposition being discussed here.

As large as this theoretical endeavor might appear to be, it does not compare to many small businesses that have been started on a shoestring and successfully built up over the span of decades into important enterprises.

I am not attempting to discourage this post in any way. I'm just throwing some cold hard figures against the wall to see how far they splat.