When it is roll film, it is termed microfilm, when many pictures appear on an index-card size sheet, it is called microfiche .
Many older corporations have vast archives of microfilm.
As documents aged and were no longer accessed frequently, space could be reduced by filiming and then discarding the originals. In libraries, very old, valuable, or fragile documents are often microfilmed to provide public access without risk to the originals. The government uses microfiche in many of their personnel records sections, providing a quick way to duplicate an employee folder for promotion reviews, etc. Optix supports scanners that can transform microfilm and microfiche into digital form, just like scanning paper documents. Often, rolls can be scanned as a batch and autoindexed.