Microforms in Libraries: Preservation and Storage

Abstract

Discusses both "the use of microform technology as a tool for storing and preserving information traditionally recorded on paper and the proper methods for storing and preserving microforms themselves."If the title of this article seems ambiguous, it is meant to be so, for the topic is really two quite distinct topics: first, the use of microform technology as a tool for storing and preserving information traditionally recorded on paper; and second, the proper methods for storing and preserving microforms themselves. This distinction is very significant, because there are two separate library functions involved: access to information on the one hand, and the custodial care of objects on the other. Both are essential if librarians are to provide good service, but they are quite different in administrative requirements, the policies and day-to-day procedures which make them work.The custodial function is straightforward and relatively simple, based on plain physical facts; this will be dealt with in the latter section. The access function, keeping information available through microforms, is considerably more complex, involving the coordination of judgments regarding value, need, usability and economics-to my mind a more interesting and provocative area of management, which will be considered first. Preserving InformationBanish for a moment thoughts of microformats, book formats, slides, tapes, the whole range of particular media which may be found in libraries. Marshall McLuhan not withstanding, it is possible to conceive of information apart from the medium by which it is stored and communicated. A library is an information place, the institution traditionally responsible for assembling the information needed by its clientele, organizing that information so that Pamela W. Darling is Head, Preservation Department, Columbia University Libraries it can be identified easily, and storing it in such a way that it is usable at some future moment of actual need. The responsibility is the same whether the information in question is a mathematical formula, Socrates' dying words, a sociological theory, the ghost's message to Hamlet, or the color of Mona Lisa's eyes. In some cases the nature of the information and the purposes for which it is needed make it essential that a particular medium be used to record the "message": a sound recording to demonstrate how Caruso sang, a picture to convey what he looked like, a piece of paper to display his handwriting. But other types of information may be effectively conveyed through more than one medium: Caruso's views on opera in America might be learned by listening to a recorded interview, reading a transcript of that interview in a book, or viewing the pages of that book on a microfilm reader.There is no gainsaying the fact that the bulk of the information generated by our society and culture, until very recently, has been recorded in eye-legible characters on paper, and that that paper has usually been conveniently packaged between covers as a book: a portable, standardized forma...

The Utilization of Microforms in Technical Services

“…Of the three principal reasons why libraries, in general, have come to rely on microformssaving space, 4 preservation, 5 and cost 8 -the overriding factor in technical services is cost. 7 The skyrocketing price of access to bibliographic information in the past decade 8 has caused many technical services librarians to take a second and much harder look at microforms as an alternative.…”