The Vendor is required to provide the agency with preservation microfilming of state newspapers held by the library.
- This includes the filming of an existing backlog of newspapers as well as ongoing filming of state newspapers received by the agency during the term of the contract.
- The current newspaper collection includes approximately 750,000 pages.
- Preservation microfilming must include collation, camera prep, and all steps necessary to create 35mm silver halide master negative film and one silver halide positive copy of each roll of film produced.
- Transportation of the newspapers to the vendor’s facility and shipping of the film back to the agency must be included.
- Deposit of the master negative film at Iron Mountain (where the rest of our microfilm negatives are stored) must also be included.
- Produce high-quality microfilm surrogates of newspapers held by the library that will satisfy the needs and requirements of researchers, archivists, librarians, and the general public for all reasonably anticipated purposes, including the use of both text and image material for general and scholarly research, as well as the use of newspaper images for display or exhibition purposes.
- Every effort shall be made to record in the new format all information contained in and issued with the original newspaper, and to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the representation of the original document on microfilm.
- Services must include collation, camera prep, and all steps necessary to create 35mm silver halide master negative film and one silver halide positive copy of each roll of film produced.
- Deposit of the master negative film at Iron must also be included.
- As the final product will be roll film to be used by the public in a broad range of microfilm readers, optimum legibility shall be the determining factor throughout the preparation and filming process.
- Image orientation and reduction ratios shall be selected with the objective both to fill the frame and to obtain the greatest possible degree of legibility in public use copies.
- The choice of image orientation shall be determined by the size of the pages, type size, and the number of pages per issue.
- First generation microfilm of newspapers shall provide a high resolution quality to allow duplication through as many as four generations.
- Variation from this expectation, with specific information regarding how factors other than quality index will affect desired reduction and resolution, shall be communicated to agency and resolved prior to filming.
- Filming shall be done on a planetary camera with variable pull-down.
- The camera shall be capable of high resolution. For example, when the e-height is 1.3mm, the camera system should be capable of resolving from 128 to 160 line pairs on the master negative depending upon the reduction ratio (generally 16X to 20X).
- Looking at this another way, the lowest allowable pattern resolved after looking at all 5 resolving power patterns on the technical target will be between 8.0 and 7.1, at a reduction ratio of between 16X and 20X.
- Filming will generally be done on a black background.
- As the background and contrast of the pages to be filmed on the same reel changes, the camera operator shall adjust illumination or in some other way compensate to make the density of the negative images relatively even throughout the reel.
- Exceptionally, in order to adequately capture detail in photographs or other fine detail illustrations, or to capture important color variations, intentional duplicate exposures at variant illumination settings may be used.
- For the second-generation intermediate print master, non-reversing silver-gelatin unperforated polyester based duplicating film shall be used.
- Silver halide microfilm must be developed only with an organic developing agent that is compounded to produce an essentially black image, fixed in a thiosulfate bath, and washed with water to remove residual hypo (sodium thiosulfate).
- The microfilm development process shall be monitored at least daily using sensitometric control strips as described in the latest version of MS23.
- Results shall be logged and the log shall be made available for consultation by a designated representative as required.
- To insure that the resolution test target is filmed on the same camera, at the same time, and under conditions that will achieve the same background density as the text, there shall be no splices between the resolution target and the adjacent ten frames of text, both at the beginning and at the end of the reel.
- Processed film shall be inspected as soon as possible after processing is completed. Inspection records shall be maintained and made available for review.
- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: January 23, 2026
