Microfilm and other Means of Documentary Reproduction

Abstract

AT the nineteenth annual conference of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux held in December last, it was felt that justice could not be done to the photographic reproduction of documents by microfilm and other methods without a special conference on this subject alone. Such a conference was therefore held in London in the rooms of the Royal Society during June 1–2, under the auspices of the ASLIB Microfilm Service. Its three sessions drew a full gathering of some hundred and fifty librarians and other workers in bibliographical fields, including many from government departments, and a number of representatives of the photographic industry. The first two sessions were devoted largely to technical matters related to copying and reproduction processes, and the third and last session to the vexed question of copyright. At all three sessions the vigour of the discussions, quite as much as the high quality of the contributions of the principal speakers, provided a measure of the value of the conference; and if little was achieved in the way of proposals for that standardization which would do more than anything else to promote the use of this valuable new tool—a tool destined, some maintain, to transform research library practice—the conference did succeed in demonstrating the variety of purposes for which document-copying by photographic means is needed, and in suggesting some of the directions in which advances are likely to be most rapid.