Microforms: Marriages, Mergers, and Migrations

University of South Florida Scholar Commons School of Information Faculty Publications School of Information 2005 Microforms: Marriages, Mergers, and Migrations Authors: Anna H. Perrault “Migration” is a term used to describe the reformatting of materials or the moving of information from one format to a different format. The onc version of printed and original documents to microformats was a migration from paper, which was regarded as impermanent, to film, which was regarded as permanent. Today the term “migration” is most often used to denote the conversion of print or microform texts to electronic format to another. This paper begins with a brief history of the development of microforms as a storage and preservation medium with emphasis on the last two decades of the twentieth century in the United States. Recent issues in access and preservation are examined. Finally, the future of microforms is considered in light of migration to electronic formats for preservation. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/si_facpub Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Scholar Commons Citation Perrault, Anna H., "Microforms: Marriages, Mergers, and Migrations" (2005). School of Information Faculty Publications. 27. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/si_facpub/27 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Information Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Microforms: Marriages, Mergers, and Migrations by Anna H. Perrault History The production of microforms can be traced to an invention by John Dancer of Manchester, England, who in 1839 had the idea of “marrying” two devices with lenses to fashion a camera which would produce the magnification of a microscope. Thus, microphotography was invented. At first, the invention was utilized to incorporate portraits into jewelry. The technique migrated across the Channel to France and an industry grew through demand for the microphotographic novelties. Rene Dragon is reported to have had over one hundred and fifty workmen turning out the popular jewelry. A more significant and utilitarian use emerged when the city of Paris was surrounded by Prussian troops for five months during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. There were no satisfactory communications media for correspondence and news into or out of the city during the siege. Dragon was employed to fly out of the city in a balloon with his microphotographic equipment and photograph letters and official dispatches to be sent back to Paris via carrier pigeon. Thus the second major use for microphotography became the reduction of correspondence to make it more easily transportable for governmental work and espionage. Dragon had shown that large volumes of information could be reduced to minuscule amounts of space.i In 1906, Robert Goldschmidt and Paul Otlet published an article in the Bulletin of the International Institute of Bibliography in which they suggested that books could be reproduced onto small sheets of film, a forerunner of microfiche. The paper received little attention and was re-published in 1925.ii Around that time, George McCarthy sold the idea for a new system of microfilm processing to the Eastman Kodak Company. The process was named Recordak for a new division of Eastman which McCarthy headed. The process utilized a new microfilm camera and included a machine for viewing the microfilm. Microfilming was adopted by business and industry for records management, e.g. banks for cancelled checks, insurance companies for policies.iii We can see that microfilming was not first utilized in education, but in government and business. By the 1930s, several large research libraries-- Harvard, Yale, and the Library of Congress-- had begun building microform collections and also selling copies of works the libraries owned. American researchers saw the advantages of using microcopying for manuscripts and archival materials from Europe.iv By the mid 1930s, Eugene Power had founded University Microfilms and the U.S. Government had begun filming copies of paper documents for wider distribution. Power began filming English books printed prior to 1550 and also initiated Dissertation Abstracts and the filming of 1 the dissertations indexed in DA. The primary applications of microfilming as described by Power are: · a means of protecting books, manuscripts, and document against low and unnecessary use · securing permanent copies of ephemeral material · obtaining copies of material in distant depositories · reducing the space occupied by a collection of materials in traditional formats · original publications of scholarly and technical material · republishing material in short supply or out of printv During the years after World War II in the United States, new colleges and universities were built to accommodate the large number of war veterans going to college. These new institutions‟ libraries had funding to buy entire collections and an industry sprang up to produce collections of out-or-print and rare books and periodical and newspaper backfiles. In the 1950s a number of different microformats were employed: microfilm, microprint, microcard, and microfiche. (The term “microfiche” is derived from the French “fiche,” a sheet or card and is one of the oldest microformats.vi) The growth period for the library microforms market was the 1950s and 1960s. In 1970, the Association of Research Libraries reported that the proportion of microforms to printed books in research libraries was nearing 25 percent with an average of half a million microform units per library.vii By the early 1970s the development of microphotography and microcopying had matured as an industry made up of a number of large corporations plus smaller “cottage” industry type companies. Whether or not these for-profit companies should remunerate libraries for being given permission to microfilm original materials was controversial. There were also copyright issues. Although the production of COM (computer output microfilm) had been introduced in the 1960s COM was mainly used in the production of library catalogs and other technical and records producing operations. Thus, COM did not threaten the micropublishing industry, but was an addition to it. There would be little change until the technological revolution which began in the 1980s. Microforms had become a major component of managing library collections and a number of issues had emerged. Microform Review began publication in 1972. In the inaugural issue there was an article on “Bibliographic Control of Microforms,” by Felix Reichmann.viii Microform Review, Inc. also began publishing a series in Library Micrographics Management of which Studies in Micropublishing, 1853-1976 was volume 2. Two new publications, International Microforms in Print (containing 6,000 titles) and Microform Market Place, began publication in the early 1970s and ceased in 1997. In the mid-1970s the Library of Congress began publication of its subject headings in COM fiche and the U.S. Government Printing Office began issuing materials on microfiche for the Depositoy Library Program. Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS) began an annual review column of microforms in 1975. William Saffady authored Micrographics, in the Libraries Unlimited Library Science Text series in 1978. In 1980, The Microform Revolution in Libraries (JAI Press) was published in the Foundations in Library and Information Science series. 2 In a review of the literature from 1975-1984, Farrington summarized the developments during those ten years: For individuals who held the euphoric view that microforms were a panacea for all library preservation ills and collection shortcomings, this was a time of coming to terms with reality. For those who dreaded that microforms had met their demise, there was new excitement about the format with the introduction of COM, the availability of new reference tools on microfiche such as Phonefiche and college catalogs, the adoption of standards for archival quality film, and the beginnings of true bibliographic control of microforms.”ix During the period from 1974-1985 there was a preoccupation with user resistance to microforms and in the latter years, articles promoting the education of users in the benefits of microforms. Introduced in the 1970s, ultrafiche did not gain acceptance. In this same time frame, the bibliographic control of microforms was advanced by the major bibliographic databases, OCLC and RLIN.x Even in the decades that micropublishing was flourishing, with regard to collection development Yerburgh observed that microforms were most often not acquired on a systematic basis as were books and serials. Furthermore, “Until such time as microforms are acquired in the same systematic manner that books are, the medium will always remain something of a bibliographic wild card.” xi With the exception of periodical backfiles and a few microform series placed on standing order, microforms remained an on demand acquisition or a last minute purchase when a sudden windfall provided large sums of funds to be expended on short notice. The last editions of Microform Research Collections: A Guide and An Index to Microform Collections (Meckler) in 1984 may be considered a turning point in the history of the microform marketplace. Articles on the death of microforms began to appear: “Will the Optical

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