THE CONTRIBUTION OF MICROPHOTOGRAPHY AND REPRINTS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIBRARIES
| Published date | 01 April 1987 |
| Pages | 334-349 |
| Date | 01 April 1987 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026815 |
| Author | DENNIS COX |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION
THE CONTRIBUTION OF MICROPHOTOGRAPHY AND REPRINTS
TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIBRARIES
DENNIS COX
Emeritus
Librarian,
University
of
Leeds, Leeds,
LS2 9JT
The benefits that photographic and allied printing methods, particularly photo-
lithography and microphotography, have brought to libraries during the past
half-century are examined. The history of the application of these techniques
is outlined. Their rapid growth coincided with the unprecedented increase in uni-
versity foundations and student numbers and with the great expansion of research.
Librarians have been the main customers for reprints and virtually the only
customers for micropublications yet they have had very little influence over the
suppliers. Because they are completely different in format from books, micro-
forms have presented special problems in acquisition, cataloguing, and
use.
Despite
early predictions microphotography has not radically altered the nature of li-
braries and has not generally been used to save space. It is passing through a
transitional phase because of the development of computers and other new equip-
ment. Computer output microfilm (COM) catalogues are now commonly to be
found in libraries.
INTRODUCTION
IN THIS ARTICLE I concern myself with the ways in which libraries, particu-
larly academic libraries, have benefited during the past half century from those
photographic and allied printing methods which have made possible the easy
facsimile copying of books and documents, that is photolithography and micro-
photography. These methods had earlier origins but were developed, microphoto-
graphy in particular, in the decade before the 1939-46 war; they diminished the
problems caused by the breakdown at that time of the international distribution
of publications and were increasingly used afterwards to provide for the great ex-
pansion in scientific and other research and the unprecedented growth of univer-
sities.
I am concerned primarily with publishing and with collection building,
including preservation, and not with single copying to the individual requests of
readers though I shall have something to say about microfilming projects under-
taken on behalf of libraries or scholarly organisations.
REPRINTS
I turn first to what have come conveniently to be called reprints. They present a
less complex picture than microphotography. I take the term reprint to mean a
new printing made from the original type by photographic methods and issued by
a publisher not identical with the publisher of the original work. I am concerned
with books for the academic market, and primarily with British and American
publications. I have nothing to say about the pirate unauthorised reprints of new
Journal of Documentation, Vol. 43, No. 4, December 1987, pp. 334-349.
334
December 1987 MICROPHOTOGRAPHY AND REPRINTS
books especially in the third world, the number of which is not only infinitely
worrying to the original publishers but also demonstrates the ease with which
books can be reproduced.
The British Ordnance Survey was perhaps the first to reproduce a scholarly
item by a photographic technique, called photozincography, when it published a
facsimile of Domesday Book in the years 1861 and 1862. During the succeeding
decades other photographic reprints followed, notably of rate early printed books
not least those important to the student of
literature.
Among
them,
Tor
example,
was the First Folio of Shakespeare begun at roughly the same time as Domesday
Book and completed in 1866, again splendidly reproduced by collotype in 1902,
and yet again by photozincography in 1909. Names like Edward Arber, J. S.
Farmer,
F.
J. Furnivall and Sir Walter Greg and societies like the New Shakespeare
Society and the Malone Society come readily to mind when reflecting upon the
output of these years, and reprints were made from type facsimiles as well as by
photographic methods.
In the period between the two world wars the possibilities of photo-offset for
the reproduction of out-of-print rather than of rare early printed books began to
be realised, especially in the United
States.
For example, Peter Smith who had moved
from librarianship to second-hand bookselling started in 1929 in the United States
to reprint scarce and wanted out-of-print titles for library use. A bookseller re-
ceiving many more orders for an out-of-print book listed in a catalogue than can
be satisfied even after searching for further copies is in a position to judge which
titles might profitably be reprinted. Then, Robert C. Binkley's fascinating
Manual
on
methods
of
reproducing research materials
was published in 1936.
Metcalf,
the dis-
tinguished American librarian, commented about Binkley that he 'gave methods
of reproducing print their greatest boost between the invention of the Photostat,
which was first used in libraries in 1912, and the Xerox . . . which came into use
many years after his death'.1 Binkley, among other things, drew attention to the
usefulness of the photo-offset process to reproduce printed books and manuscripts
'In at least one instance - the making of the new Early Modern English and
Middle English dictionaries under the sponsorship of the American Council of
Learned Societies - it has resulted in an extraordinary saving of scholarly labor.
The editors of these new dictionaries have selected the writings of this period to
be used in the dictionaries. The manuscripts and early prints have been repro-
duced by photo-offset and set before the scholars in loose-leaf form - about 200
impressions of each page. The scholar takes one page and marks in it all the words
to be indexed. A typist then takes one loose-leaf for each word marked by the
scholar, types the marked work at the top of the leaf and files it alphabetically'.2
Binkley's book was the result of a survey made for the Joint Committee on
Materials for Research of the Social Science Research Council and the American
Council of Learned Societies - which he chaired. Its first paragraph explained its
starting point, 'Research in the social sciences and humanities is unlike research in
the natural sciences in that it uses written texts as its principal material. The first
duty of scholarship is to protect and preserve original writings, the loss of which
would be irretrievable. Except in the case of records committed to perishable
paper this service does not call for the reproduction of the texts. But great
importance must also be attached to those mechanical impediments which hinder
a scholar whenever he is compelled to alter his plans or suspend his work because
he can neither go to the material he needs nor have the material brought to him.
Unless a given body of research material is reproduced in so many copies and
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