Touchstone  February 2004

By Yvonne Wilkie
Director of Archives

Can you recall the hype that surrounded the increased availability of personal computers and the introduction of the so called ‘paperless society'?  No longer would we have books to read, paper for letter writing or business transactions, the computer would relieve us of  the clutter paper can create.  A similar hype began within the Library world in the 1930s with the perfecting of the 35mm camera which enabled more sophisticated microfilm; that small sheet or roll of film with minute images that are magnified many times over through an optical film reader.

The advertising that promoted this new technology appealed to Librarians and Archivists; it would free up some valuable shelf space!  Imagine those large 19th and 20th century newspapers that were bound in 10 year or more lots, hugely difficult and cumbersome to handle and not referred to as frequently as administrators believed justified their existence.
To film a Library's collection of newspapers and then dispose of the originals could mean that 150 years of papers would be reduced from many metres of shelf space to a small filing cabinet.

The producers of this new technology, however, required more then a space saving argument to ensure that Library and Archives administrators would purchase their product. What could be more convincing then to look at the very substance of the material to be microfilmed, the newsprint?

From the 1870s on the rag content in paper began to be replaced with more acidic materials, in particular wood pulp. The argument goes that as a consequence, if poorly stored, paper becomes brittle and discoloured.  One day when a newspaper is picked up it will just crumble in your hand and its contents lost forever.  To safeguard against this tragic outcome administrators were told, photographing the newspapers was the only logical outcome.

Library and Archives administrators enthusiastically agreed and argued that their policies of providing access to past papers could still prevail, that by filming them they were also preserving them, and the filming enabled them to dispose of the originals, thus increasing shelf space for more significant material. Disposal strategies make any Archivist's heart sink.  They ranged from ‘re-pulping' to being guillotined into pieces and sold as fill in building sites.

The enthusiasm for film did not measure up to any accurate scientific evidence. The longevity of film itself was not fully known in the 1950s and 1960s when Library microfilming projects took off.  We are very aware of the inflammable nature of nitrate film today and the irreparable shrinkage of cellulose acetate film.  By the 1980s libraries across the USA and Europe began to notice deterioration amongst their pre 1970 film.  Some of this film was no more then 25 years old.

Besides the chemical deterioration of the film, the photographed print had faded whether it was highly used or not, fungi found nourishment in the gelatine emulsion placed over the film, yellow spots had appeared and chemicals from development residue not fully removed were interacting.  Aside from the chemical reactions the years have revealed poor photography, gaps in the ‘run' of issues, missing and half copied pages.  One Library in the USA reported that of its 7 000 rolls (84 million pages) pre-1960 microfilm, one-third of it is unreadable.  Few of these films can be replaced as the original newspapers were disposed of and cannot be located anywhere.

A lesson lies in this very scant history of the microfilm and should alert us to continuing electronic developments.  New technologies are not necessarily better then the old ways of preservation.  There can be a definite plus in digitising collections especially with the new means of information distribution for research purposes.  But to scan and destroy the original is now proven a folly.

The irony is that old newspapers that still exist in Libraries and Archives have deteriorated very little in the last 60 years or so compared with film.  The original papers will continue to be accessible for many decades to come if stored correctly, whereas the long term outcomes of the new technologies of scanning and digitisation continue to be vulnerable and uncertain.