A Survey of Microform Users

摘要

Microform technology has enjoyed a storied history that extends forward from the middle of the 19th Century. Reducing larger documents and placing their contents on card or film has proven to be an efficient way to store vast quantities of information on much smaller surfaces. Micro-technology provides a reliable and economical method for managing data, and it has stood the test of time.rnImprobable claims have accompanied this development. Some enthusiasts once forecast that microfilm would replace paper and, therefore, the books inrnthe great libraries. Disaffected sufferers of reader fatigue have recoiled at having to contend with the bulky and often faulty machines that were required for reading microforms. In the mid-20th Century when the tiniest libraries acquired microfilm copies of the valuable Papers of the Presidents, formerly only available for inspection in the original at the Library of Congress, they celebrated this coup. Yet information service workers at these libraries often encountered clients who would change topics rather than use micro sources. Someone observed that reels of microfilm represented not progress but the reinventionrnof the scroll. Today some predict that digitization will replace microform technology. Computer-generation student inquirers often consider information available in print, in paper or on film, to be obsolete, and for them the only reliable information comes electronically. This is patently false, and extremely dangerous, considering that the Internet contains elements of an information flea market - a garage sale for ideas as well as a warehouse of valuable sources. Some observers have speculated that microforms are passe and dead.