Mr Browning has raised a world-wide issue. I am fortunate that the National Library of Australia facilitates the transfer of mfm to digital records. A day's solid work, using a flashstick, allows me to download enough material to keep me busy for many weeks. The initial capital cost is obviously higher, requiring a computer to be added to the mfm reader but as a research aid it is worth years of time and above all, eliminates the cost of transferring from the mfm reader to a printer, with all the capital and consumer costs. And it never runs out of paper. The financial saving to researchers in enormous.
It is the best midway point between total digitization, which is obviously the best current technology and traditional mfm reading and copying.
In the longer term, and there are good examples galore digitizing eliminates ILL as the digitized material is easily transferred to disk. This has proved a good source of income for libraries servicing family historians. I have a disk of all the people who settled in Victoria from settlement to 1900, including my father and his entire family (in Australia).
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lyle E. Browning" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, February 20, 2009 12:09 pm
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] New LVA microfilm
To: [log in to unmask]
> I certainly applaud the recording of records for posterity and
> making
> them available for public use.
>
> But please tell me why they're not being digitized on the
> scanners
> that the library already has rather than using 1950's technology?
>
> We've had this argument before, I know, but somewhere there
> needs to
> be a recognition that serving the greater public with digital
> will get
> more folks served than a MF roll that one person at a time can view.
>
> A scanner already in place costs the same as a person to run a
> MF
> machine, presumably. After that, MF costs are way higher. Far
> fewer
> people can have access, it's B&W, the resolution isn't great,
> and so
> on and so forth.
>
> Is there a cogent rationale that has compared both and found
> MF
> superior or what?
>
> Just asking, again, grumbling, again.
>
> Lyle Browning, Resident Curmudgeon
>
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(Dr) Ian Welch
Division of Pacific and Asian History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
College of Asia and the Pacific
Australian National University
Canberra
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