Yes, microfiche is still used, though its role has shifted dramatically. Rather than being an active filing system for new records, microfiche today serves primarily as a legacy storage medium. Millions of records created decades ago remain on microfiche in government agencies, libraries, courthouses, and financial institutions, and many of those records have never been digitized. As long as those collections exist, so does the need to read, maintain, and eventually convert them.
Where Microfiche Still Shows Up
The largest concentrations of active microfiche collections sit in government offices, public libraries, healthcare systems, and financial institutions. County clerks’ offices, for example, often hold decades of property deeds, birth certificates, and court records on microfiche. Public libraries maintain newspaper archives and genealogical records in the format. Hospitals and insurers may still store patient records or policy documents from the 1970s through the 1990s on microfiche cards.
These aren’t curiosities sitting in a back room. In regulated industries like government, healthcare, and finance, organizations are legally required to retrieve records on demand. If a property dispute requires a deed from 1983 or a malpractice claim needs a medical record from 1991, someone has to pull that microfiche card and read it. The records are still legally binding, and in many cases they’re the only copy that exists.
Very few organizations are creating new microfiche today. The format is almost entirely in “maintenance mode,” meaning institutions are preserving what they have while slowly planning or executing digitization projects.
Why It Hasn’t Been Replaced Yet
The short answer is cost and scale. A single government archive can hold hundreds of thousands of microfiche cards, each containing dozens of page images. Digitizing all of that takes time and money. The National Archives prices microfiche-to-digital conversion at roughly $0.01 to $0.26 per image, depending on the format, resolution, and quality control involved. That sounds cheap until you multiply it across millions of images. A mid-sized county office with 500,000 microfiche cards, each holding 60 to 90 images, could face a conversion project involving tens of millions of individual scans.
Budget constraints, competing priorities, and the sheer logistical challenge of quality-checking millions of scanned images mean that many institutions have digitized only a fraction of their collections. Some haven’t started at all. For those organizations, the microfiche reader in the corner of the office isn’t a relic. It’s essential infrastructure.
The Equipment Is Still Being Made
One clear sign that microfiche hasn’t disappeared: companies are still manufacturing readers and scanners for it. Digital Check Corporation, through its subsidiaries STImaging and nextScan, released the ViewScan 5 digital microfilm reader in October 2025. Their product line ranges from individual viewing stations (for someone who needs to look up a single record) to high-speed bulk conversion scanners designed for large-scale digitization projects.
This isn’t a niche hobbyist market. These machines are built for institutional use, priced accordingly, and designed to handle the volume that government agencies and large libraries deal with. The fact that manufacturers continue investing in new models tells you that demand, while shrinking, is far from zero.
How Long Microfiche Actually Lasts
One of microfiche’s original selling points was durability, and that reputation is largely deserved. Microfiche made on polyester film base is considered archival, with a life expectancy of 500 years or more under proper storage conditions. That’s dramatically longer than any digital storage medium currently available. Hard drives, SSDs, magnetic tape, and optical discs all degrade within decades and require periodic migration to new formats.
Not all microfiche ages equally well, though. Cards made with cellulose acetate film are vulnerable to a chemical breakdown known as vinegar syndrome, named for the sharp acidic smell it produces. The film base shrinks and warps, eventually making the images unreadable. Humid storage conditions accelerate this process. Federal regulations call for storing acetate-based media below 40 degrees Fahrenheit with 20 to 40 percent relative humidity to slow deterioration. All silver-gelatin microfiche, regardless of film base, can also develop small blemishes called redox spots that damage image quality over time.
This creates an ironic urgency: the format that was chosen for its longevity is now, in many collections, approaching the limits of its readable life. Acetate-based microfiche from the 1960s and 1970s stored in poorly controlled environments may already be degrading. That’s one of the strongest practical arguments for digitization sooner rather than later.
The Shift Toward Digitization
Most institutions with significant microfiche holdings are either actively digitizing or planning to. The goal is straightforward: convert the images to digital files (typically TIFF or PDF at 300 dpi), apply basic indexing so records are searchable, and retire the physical microfiche to deep storage or disposal. Once digitized, records become instantly searchable, shareable across locations, and far easier to back up.
The pace varies enormously. Large federal agencies and well-funded university libraries have been running conversion projects for years. Smaller county offices and local libraries often lack the budget and may be decades away from completing the work. In the meantime, they maintain their microfiche collections and keep their readers operational, sometimes repairing aging equipment because replacing it is expensive.
For anyone who needs to access microfiche records today, the practical reality is simple: call ahead. Libraries, courthouses, and archives that still hold microfiche typically have readers available for public use, but not always in working order or convenient locations. If you’re doing genealogical research or need historical records, check whether the collection has been digitized first. Many large collections, including significant portions of the National Archives, are now available online or through interlibrary digital access. But for the records that haven’t been converted yet, the microfiche reader remains the only way in.