Microforms: History Preserved
By Kathy Cephas, Student Multimedia Design Center
Imagine a room filled with thousands upon thousands of physical copies of newspapers and journals. How much space would that take up? How difficult would it be to navigate?
At Morris Library, you won’t have to wade through stacks of yellow brittle paper in a never-ending room to access what you need thanks to our microforms collection.
Microforms are reproductions of information that have been scaled down and captured in a series of microphotographs. There are several types of microforms including microfiche, or flat sheets of film, and microfilm, small film reels.
Organized row of microfilm. (National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States.)
Organized rows of microfiche.
Within the Library’s microforms collection of more than 3.5 million items, you will find magazines, dissertations and government documents in addition to newspapers and journals.
Libraries use microforms to not only digitize and preserve content, but to save space. Since the images on microforms have been reduced to around 4% of their original size, they require much less space. That said, they require special equipment to enlarge the information so it can be read and engaged with.
SMDC workstation revealing microform viewing equipment.
Close-up of ST Viewscanner microform viewing equipment.
Researchers within the University of Delaware community and around the world are welcome to use our microforms and the necessary equipment.
Say, for example, you want to read the Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of the U.S. Bicentennial. If you search the library’s catalog for issues of the newspaper from 1976, it will provide specific information about where you will find these issues in our microforms collection.*
You can use this information to locate the specific resources yourself or ask for assistance from the friendly staff at the Student Multimedia Design Center (SMDC) service desk. Most of the microfilms collection is stored in Room 008 on the Lower Level while government documents are kept on microfiche in cabinets along the back wall of the Lower Level.
Doors to Microforms Room on the Lower Level of Morris Library.
Government document cabinets.
SMDC staff can help you find what you are looking for and get you set up at the reader. While you won’t be able to print directly from the reader, you can save it to a USB stick or email it to yourself so it can be printed from a different computer.
If you are a member of the UD community who wants to view the microforms but don’t have the ability to stop in Morris Library, you can also request a scan of a specific article using your UD ID.
* When searching the catalog for the Philadelphia Inquirer, you will also find information about online databases that members of the UD community can use to access previous issues without needing to view the physical microforms.
This article is part of the weekly series “Multimedia Tips and Tricks,” which shares content in response to frequently asked questions at the Student Multimedia Design Center. We’d love to hear from you. Please share your feedback with us by filling out our survey.