392G - Management of Preservation Programs

Fall 2006

Class 7

Preservation Reformatting

Today’s Topics

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 large-scale 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

Harvard University (handout)

Advantages/Disadvantages of Microformats

Advantages: 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

Disadvantages: Microform readers not user friendly and often not up-

to-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

Disadvantages: 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?

ARL Statement (handout)

Organization of Reformatting http://www.library.cornell.edu/about/digital.html

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/preservation/digital.html

http://library.osu.edu/sites/dlib/

http://preserve.harvard.edu/digital/

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/dls/

Workflow

Microfilming (handouts)