In all the times I've used microfilm, I've never thought about its creation or what the inventor had in mind. Kahle wrote:
The dream of using motion-picture film stock to take photographs of document pages was pioneered and promoted by a brilliant American named Robert C. Binkley. Beginning in the late 1920s, he tested, wrote about and championed microfilm, not only as a means of making copies for preservation, but for distributed access to documents as well. Binkley saw the potential for democratization of knowledge and the positive impact that distributed learning might have on society. He advocated for research and scholarship that took place outside of university walls; for citizen-led collecting and preservation of historical documents; and for microfilm as a means of publishing books in small quantities, especially academic monographs that might not be profitable for the publishing trade. His writing is replete with visions of technology as a means to solve the age-old problems of scholarly publishing and as a means of increasing the historical understanding of the population as a whole. If he had lived to see the early Internet, he might have viewed it as validation of the ideas he expressed in the 1930s.
Microfilm was seen as increasing access! (Now we look to the Internet as a way of increasing access.)
Kahle goes on to write about the commercialization of the format, then how the format is no longer being used. There is microfilm which contains valuable sources and which needs to be saved. Digitization is an important option for preserving the information and making it more accessible.
If you have microfilm or know of organizations that have microfilm, consider how to make its content more available. Yes, consider digitization. If you cannot digitize yourself, find a partner.
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