Hidden in plain sight lies one of Fogler Library’s greatest assets, a resource often ignored by students due to its passé nature: microfilm, the gateway to journalistic history.
Even though microfilm can be difficult to use, the sheer depth of the dated technology presents is invaluable to researchers. Depending on the subject, microfilm can sometimes be the best method to find certain newspaper articles or documents; one must simply power through the sluggish research process and old-fashioned machinery.
On the Fogler Library’s first floor is the microfilm room, a cluttered, dusty area lined with bookshelves of film reels corresponding to different newspapers nationwide. These reels are organized by decades, and each reel holds two weeks of newspaper content. Somebody looking for a specific Washington Post article, for example, need only place the appropriate reel on one of six film readers, and an enlarged image will display the selected newspaper.
“Sometimes, microfilm is the only resource for your topic,” Regional Federal Depository Librarian Gregory Curtis said. “Even though a lot of people are scared to use it, it can be an invaluable resource. I used to dislike using microfilm as a student, and now it is much more comfortable to use.”
When Curtis was in school, microfilm wasn’t digitally recorded on film, meaning text and pictures were sometimes illegible. The machines themselves were harder to use, but different machine iterations have since remedied these qualms. However, microfilm apparatuses are still imposing, even intimidating for students used to the convenience of computers.
There is no search function, which makes researching a slow process. One needs to manually move the film across the desk-sized reader to access different days of the newspaper. However, each newspaper issue is catalogued in its entirety, unlike many online sources. The New York Times’ newspaper archive, for example, is behind a paywall, a substantial obstruction for many students.
“We have community members come in often looking for articles pertaining to their family history, or something similar,” Curtis said. “Microfilm’s usefulness definitely isn’t limited to students.”
While certain computers in the microfilm room are only for reading and printing, others allow users to transfer a section of microfilm to email, PDF or USB drive.
“Sometimes microfilm is the best, most cost-efficient, or even the only format for a given title or collection,” Head of Fogler Library Collection Services Deborah Rollins said. “It is useful because it can be loaned to other research libraries for their patrons’ use, and the material is owned rather than subscribed. Its compact format is also advantageous.”
UMaine, along with other research institutions, began its microfilm collection in the mid-1920s. Since Fogler Library is a U.S. Federal Depository Library, a sizeable part of the collection is government documents. Located on the second floor of Fogler Library, these are only viewable by special request. Unlike the newspaper articles in the microfilm room, these documents are stored on microfiche, a flat, square film sheet instead of narrow reels.
Microphotography dates back to the mid-1830s, but it wasn’t until the 1920s that microfilm became commercially used. However, Curtis notes, smaller colleges are starting to phase out microfilm in lieu of computers’ dominance. In the near future, however, UMaine will continue buying microfilmed local newspapers, as that is usually the only way such material is preserved.
Outside the library, microfilm is also used in UMaine’s Office of Student Records to store transcripts and other documents dated from UMaine’s beginning. A massive project is currently underway to transfer this material to a more-accessible computer database.
“Microfilm is much easier than trying to search through a lot of papers,” Misty Johnson, an administrative specialist with the Office of Student Records, said. “However, as it gets older, Microfilm is more fragile, and it is difficult to maintain the microfilm machines.”
The transfer process started in 2011, when the Office of Student Records first sent microfilm to a company that converted the 300,000 images to CDs. The CDs are now being run through a computer to store the material; the process is expected to be complete in five to six years, according to Johnson.
“There is research that is stored on microfilm that cannot be accessed anywhere else,” Johnson said. “Unless everything gets converted to another form, microfilm will never go completely obsolete.”