REVOLUTION IN THE LIBRARY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 545, 2 December 1949, Page 6

REVOLUTION IN THE LIBRARY

XCEPT to a_ professional librarian, who is trained to take a detached: view, the avalanche of books of all kinds pouring from the world’s printing presses bears in its crushing mass a threat of extinction. The conscientious reader, even if he is capable of reading and absorbing five or six books an evening, and a round two dozen every weekend, hasn’t a hope of keeping his head above snow level. , But libraries exist to collect and distribute books; some libraries try to collect all the books there are. The librarian would say that it is not his job to examine the moral problem, whether the books are worthy of preservation, but he is concerned with the problem of storage. The acreage covered by his shelves, like the population of China, increases rapidly and soon begins to press on the available living space. What is he to do? Libraries exist, too, to help students. In a small and isolated country like New Zealand, the student is cut off simply by distance from many books that may be absolutely necessary to his work. What is he to do? One of the answers is microfilm. . This, in the words of a sober librarian, is a method of copying documents. It is also a revolution. Other

methods of copying documents quickly have been developed and are still in use. One was the photostat process. This involved photographing the page to be copied directly on to sensitive paper, which was then fixed.and dried like an ordinary photographic negative. This method costs several shillings a page and was never used extensively in New Zealand libraries. A "second way was to make a reflex copy by direct contact, like a photographic print (in contrast with the photostat which reverses black and white). Despite the fact that it entails two processes instead of one, the reflex copy method is cheaper than photostat, but /both these methods, although they are of great assistance in spreading the contents of rare books and documents to remote places; do not help much in the reduction of storage space. First Used in 1870 MICROFILM does. The first practical demonstration of its ability to re-. duce much to little was given most spectacularly in 1870, but librarians and other interested parties have been slow in catching up. They should have taken note of the experiment of Monsieur Dagron during the Franco-Prussian War, when Paris was besieged. He ran a "pigeongraph" service from Tours, tying small rolls of film to the legs of pigeons,

and in this way was able to fly in 200,000 words a day of despatches and orders. The films were projected on to a screen and read by the commander of the garrison and his staff. Yet in 1885, Thomas Sutton’s Dictionary of Photography considered that microphotography (now defined as "any photographic image requiring optical aid to make it visible") was a process "which must strike any reasonable persen as somewhat trifling and childish, when he considers how many valuable applications of photography remain yet to be worked out." "4 So it wasn’t till 1932 that any more was heard of the process. This time news came from’ Germany where the firm of

Leitz in Jena had been doing research. The Americans took it up with enthusiasm, and by 1938 microfilm was established. Efficient cameras and readers were on the market both in Europe and America, and the method was being used by the larger libraries, banks, business houses and newspapers. "The Listener" in a Nutshell ND what about New, Zealand,. that small, isolated country where students couldn’t find the source material they needed for theit theses? The Listener talked to A. G. Bagnall, secretary of the Book Resources Committee of the New Zealand ‘Library Association, and an officer of the National Library Service. \Yes, he said, a start had been made. In the process used here, the document to be copied is photographed on to 35 millimetre film, and even with relatively crude technique a whole issue of The Listener can be put on to a strip of film 30 inches in length, ; The contents of a microfilm strip are best read by using a piece of apparatus working on the same principle ‘as a movie projector. The film runs across the top and the image can be viewed comfortably on a small screen in front or at the bottom. Magnification is of the order of 12 to 20 times, which in most, cases makes the screen image larger than the original. The most satisfactory type of apparatus ("reader" to you, reader) is fairly ex-pensive-£100 or so. All New Zealand University libraries have readers of one sort or another, and there are additional readers in the General Assembly and Alexander Turnbull Libraries, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the National Library Service headquarters in Wellington. The Turnbull Library, said Mr. Bagnall, was going in for microfilm extensively. Early Records Microfilmed Es W. STRATHEARN, of the Turn- * bull Library, talked about the work being done there, Originally they concentrated on/manuscript copies, but have now turned their attention to unpublished works such as theses, works otherwise unobtainable, and rare books. Recently they received from the British Museum between two and three thousand feet of 35-millimetre film, containing in quantity roughly 50 volumes. In New Zealand, four years ago the Aerodromes Branch of the Public Works (continued on next page)

11.2544 _'-Insurance-Social-Gt. Brit. _ ~HD7145t. Brit. British Information Services. ' {Card 1-all} . Britain’s charter of social security [New York} 1948. mer-title, 24, ,2, p. 23¢m.) Discusses the 1948 laws on "national insurance, indpstrial injuries, national health service, the care of children ant a scheme of bational assistance for those in ate need.’

(continued from previous page) Department made a start with this film, by microfilming for the Turnbull Library the Canterbury Association Papers, consisting of official correspondence of the Canterbury Association, minutes of early Council meetings, and passenger lists, instructions to the surgeons and masters and supply lists of the First’Four Ships. Other early works microfilmed include the Journal of the Rev. Henry Williams (1782-1867), and extracts from the Journal of the Rev. Joseph Orton, another early missionary, obtained from the Mitchell Library in Australia. Also from the Mitchell Library is a copy of Governor Gipps’s address to the New South Wales Legislative Council, concerning Néw Zealand, and messages between Gipps, Hobson and Bunbury in 1840. The latest microfilm in the Library is a copy of a manuscript register of the sheep brands of the Wairarapa between 1867-73, belonging to the Department of Agriculture and recently rediscovered in Masterton. But before becoming interested in sheep, our ancestors were intent on stamping out evil. The Turnbull Library now has a microfilm copy of the first English book printed in-New Zealand, the ‘Report of the Formation and Establishment of the New Zealand Temperance Society, printed by Colenso on the Church Missionary Society press landed at Paihia on December 30, 1834. ’ It is hard to see a limit to the use of microfilm. The New Zealand Library Association has been given a "microfile’ camera by the Carnegie Corporation for the specific purpose of making a catalogue of all non-fiction books in New Zealand libraries. The equipment ‘was

received this year and work has started | with microfilming the reference catalogue of the Wellington Public Library. "Hot Photography" O the librarian microfilms books and catalogues; then he goes one stage further and puts the catalogue and the book on one card, the, "microcard," so far the ultimate development in saving storage space. It is now. possible to microfilm. 100 pages of pritt on a card 7.5 centimetres by 12.5 centimetres, and further technical refinements are taking place. The backroom boys, chuckling sadistically, have now roped in television and produced a monster called Ultrafax. In New York, say, a televisién "eye" scans printed material at the rate of 30 leaves a second. The electrical impulses are re-

layed at the speed of light, say, to Los Angeles, where they impinge on sensitized paper which can be developed ready for viewing in 45 seconds. This process is known as "hot photography." As a consequence, says an authority, it is conceivable that a ton of letters, telegrams, pictures, charts, maps-a whole archive-could be transferred in facsimile from New York to Los Angeles in a matter of minutes, and simultaneously its bulk could be reduced to a spool of 16 or 35- millimetre film. These staggering developments do not necessarily make life easier for the con= scientious reader, whom we left in the first paragraph, doggedly pounding through book after book. However, he has left to him his free will, and even an Ultrafax viewer must have an "off" switch.