392G - Management of
Preservation Programs
Fall 2006
Class 7
Preservation Reformatting
Today’s Topics
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History of Reformatting Technologies and
Preservation Reformatting
Why Reformat?
Principles of Reformatting (Harvard)
Overview of Preservation Microfilming
Is Digitization a Preservation Tool?
Microphotography, Xerography
and Digitization as Applied
in Libraries and Archives:
Selected Milestones
1839 – 1st microphotograph created by John Benjamin
Dancer, son of Josiah Dancer, a Liverpool, England
microscope and optical manufacturer. Combined the
Daguerrotype (copper plate) process with a microscope, using
a 160:1 reduction ratio. Later used the collodion process,
which produced much finer detail.
1851 – A. Rosling, treasurer of the Photographic Society of
London, exhibits the first newspaper microphotographs in
pages from the Illustrated London News.
1851 – James Gleisher, an English astronomer, attended
the Great Exhibition in London. Argues in his report in the
exhibit class, “Philosophical Instruments and Processes
Depending on Their Use,” for the use of microphotography
in the preservation of documents.
1858 – Rene Patrice Dragon patents the 1st microfilm
reader.
1870 – Rene Dragon’s Pigeon Post
1906 – Robert Golschmidt and Paul Otlet write an article
published by the Institut International de Bibliographie, “Sur
une forme nouvelle du livre: le liver microphotographique”
1914 – Copying of records (plans, drawings, diagrams,
documents bearing signatures, etc.) by photography is well
established. Used to provide copies which could not easily
or cheaply be made by other means and to guarantee
accuracy in case, say, of destruction of the original.
Photostat Machine (photographic camera) - Brand name
for a diffusion transfer process used to make positive paper
photographic prints of line copy and halftones onto light
sensitive, silver emulsion papers. Early use mainly in the
engineering sector.
1920s – Microphotography equipment comes into
production.
1926 – Catalyst for microphotography’s hard-won
acceptance was the Check-O-Graphs machine, the
invention of George L. McCarthy, a one-time bank
manager. He becomes general manager of the Recordak
subsidiary of Kodak, and Kodak manufactures and sells his
camera.
1929 – The Social Science Research Council and the
American Society of Learned Societies establishes a Joint
Committee on Materials Research. They acted in
response to increasing requests from scholars for greater
access to European archives, especially through
microphotography. One of the new committee’s goals is to
set forth goals for the improvement and preservation of a
constantly expanding body of research materials vital to
scientific progress.
1930’s – Harvard, Yale, NYPL and LC begin filming
newspapers and other materials.
1934 – U.S. Department of Agriculture Library begins the
“Bibliofilm Service,” the first “on demand” microfilm service
providing microfilm negatives of books or periodical articles
upon request.
1935 – The ALA Executive Board passes a resolution
recognizing the legitimacy of microphotography as a
research tool.
1936 – Columbia University School of Library Service
offers the first course in microphotography.
1937 – Microfilm exhibit at the Paris Exposition. With
underwriting from ALA, the exhibit includes a complete
microphotographic lab for demonstration of the filming,
development, and processing of newspapers, as well as of
film projection equipment.
1937 – Chester F. Carlson, a patent attorney, applies for a
patent for an invention called, “Electron Photography.”
Carlson had invented a copying process based on
electrostatic energy.
1938 – UMI is founded by Eugene Powers, marking the
beginning of scholarly micropublishing.
1938 – The Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Project is
created by Keyes D. Metcalf, director of Harvard University
Library. He had formerly been at NYPL. NYPL has the
nation’s first reading room for microfilmed newspapers
using sample Recordak projectors.
1940 – The sheet microfilm camera (microfiche) is invented
by Joseph Goebel.
1941 – Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the
first general purpose programmable calculator. He
pioneers the use of binary math and boolean logic in
electronic calculation.
1943 – ENIAC (Electronic Numberical Integrator Analyzer
and Computer) is developed by the Ballistics Research
Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing
tables for artillery.
1945 – Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the transistor.
1945 – UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) is
developed in 1951 and can store 12,000 digits in random
access mercury-delay lines.
1948 – Chester Carlson’s invention is introduced to the
business world as “xerography.” This early process took 3
steps and was messy and slow; by 1960, however,
“xeroxing” was reduced to one step, and was much faster.
Xerography comes from the Greek for "dry writing".
1959 – The Haloid Company (later named Xerox) brings
Carlson’s idea to the marketplace.
In 1960 Xerox launches the Xerox 914, the first automatic,
plain-paper office copier--which becomes the top-selling
industrial product of all time.
1959 – Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor
both announce the integrated circuit. An integrated circuit
combine in an integrated structure the transistors, diodes,
resistors, capacitors, and other components required to
produce electronic circuitry in microminiature form.
1962 – Paul Baran of RAND develops the idea of
distributed, packet-switching networks.
1960’s – Micropublishing surges dramatically as
educational institutions boom. However, alliances between
libraries and micropublishers break down as, beyond the
basic titles in a field, preservation priorities of libraries
seldom match the results of market surveys.
1962 – Xerox sells worldwide 10,000 of the first true
photocopying machines.
1964 – The IBM 360 is introduced and quickly becomes the
standard institutional mainframe computer.
1967 – Texas Instruments invents the first hand held
calculator.
1969 – Xerox creates its Palo Alto Research Center –
Xerox PARC. Its mission is to explore the “architecture of
information.”
1971 – Texas Instruments invents a single chip
microcomputer.
1960s and 1970s, especially – The scope and urgency of
paper deterioration results in major libraries and
organizations adopting microfilming as a preservation tool.
Microfilming becomes integrated into the library
organization.
1973 – Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf develop the basic ideas of
the Internet.
1974 – The first public packet-switched network – Telenet –
opens.
1970s - 80s – Growing numbers of libraries and archives
create programs to meet preservation needs – mainly in
libraries with huge embrittlement problems where largescale single-item treatment could only be effective for a
small proportion of endangered materials.
1981 – The IBM PC is released.
1984 – The Apple Macintosh debuts.
Mid-1980’s –Early 1990’s “The Golden Age of Cooperative
Projects” – RLG GCMP projects; American Theological
Library Association – deteriorating serials collections from
theological libraries filmed by U. of Chicago and vendors;
Ohio libraries; etc.
1980’s - RLG, with support from NEH and Mellon, make
significant contributions to the translation of technical
standards and bibliographic ideas into working programs
on the local level.
Early 1980’s – Libraries begin developing online
bibliographic and circulation systems.
1985 – NEH establishes an Office of Preservation. Over
the next decade, Congress provides increasing funding to
give large-scale grants to institutions to film monographs.
The filming phase of the U.S. Newspaper Project is funded
by NEH.
1987 – The Commission on Preservation and Access is
formed.
1988 – Xerox alone has manufactured 2 million machines
worldwide since the early 1960’s.
Late 1980’s – Library Binding Service, Inc. and BookLab,
Inc. offer preservation quality photocopy facsimiles.
1990 – The Commission on Preservation and Access
begins to publish reports on the use of digital technology
for preservation and access.
1990’s – Libraries begin to experiment with using digital
technology for preservation and access. Most projects are
small-scale. Cornell leads the way.
1990’s –An ever-escalating collecting trend over the
decade, libraries are licensing electronic access to
materials and, oftentimes, cancelling paper journal titles.
1991 – Tim Berners-Lee develops the World Wide Web.
CERN releases the first Web server.
1993 – The WWW sports a growth rate of 341,634% in
service traffic in its third year.
By 1994, the Internet and its World Wide Web were
beginning to transform the presentation and
communication of human knowledge. LC took advantage of
the opportunity and, on Oct. 13, 1994, announced that it
had received $13 million in private sector donations to
establish the National Digital Library Program. That day,
building on the concepts the pilot had demonstrated, the
Library of Congress launched the American Memory
historical collections as the flagship of the National Digital
Library Program -- a pioneering systematic effort to digitize
some of LC’s foremost historical treasures and other major
research archives and make them readily available on the
Web to Congress, scholars, educators, students, the
general public, and the global Internet community.
1996-97 – The Association of Research Libraries asks
institutions to report on digitization projects as part of their
annual ARL Preservation Statistics.
June 2004 - ARL Preservation of Research Library
Materials Committee publishes “Recognizing Digitization as
a Preservation Reformatting Method.”
Principles of Reformatting
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Harvard University (handout)
Advantages/Disadvantages of
Microformats
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Advantages:
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Inexpensive, easy-to-make, usable duplicates
Great longevity (governed by numerous standards)
For archives, admissability in court
Space-efficient
Readable without a low-tech microform reader
Great for building retrospective collections
Handling, cataloging, etc. routine in libraries
Film can be converted to digital
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Disadvantages:
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Microform readers not user friendly and often not upto-date
Not easily portable for use (dependent on machines)
Cannot reproduce the intellectual and historical
information inherent in the physical characteristics of
the original
Not an optimal option for reference, literary texts or
heavily used texts
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Disadvantages:
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Lack of “browsability”
Not as easily used as a book
Cannot deal with color permanently nor reproduce the
details of halftone photo illustrations unless special
films are used
Digitization for Preservation?
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ARL Statement (handout)
Organization of Reformatting
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http://www.library.cornell.edu/about/digital.html
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http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/preservation/digital.html
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http://library.osu.edu/sites/dlib/
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http://preserve.harvard.edu/digital/
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http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/
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http://www.lib.utexas.edu/dls/
Workflow
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Microfilming (handouts)