Reader question about professional film scanners

A reader left this comment, which I thought warranted highlighting. If you have information or an opinion that you would like to share on this, please leave a comment. I'm sure the commenter (Barbara) would be interested to know what institutions are doing.

Here at the National Library of Australia we have been very concerned about the recent news that production of Kodak archival scanners Creo iQsmart series is about to be discontinued. We use these scanners, particularly iQsmart2 and iQsmart3, to digitise both reflective and transparent collection material. As far as we know Kodak are the only manufacturers making professional flatbed scanners at this level and so it looks like it will be very difficult to replace the existing equipment once it reaches the end of its useful life.

It seems that in the very near future (as early as next calendar year) most, if not all, professional film scanners will be discontinued worldwide. We are having discussions about how to deal with this situation with managers from other cultural institutions in Australia early next year. Obviously institutions such as ours will still be acquiring negatives and transparencies, including obsolete formats (glass negs and albumen prints etc) for decades to come. Naturally, they will want to continue digitising such materials.

I was wondering if you are aware of any American cultural institutions considering the future of technical means to digitise negative materials.