_microfiche_: was ist das?

[George Thompson]

Microfilm and microfiche are the same stuff, just stored differently.
Microfilm is in very long strips, stored on reels, like motion picture film
or videotape, if any of you are old enough to remember them.  Microfiche is
cut up into 3x5 or 4x6 inch cards, usually holding up to about 100 images.
The fiche are a pain in the ass for librarians, since if one is taken out
for use, there is a too-good chance that it will be put back in the wrong
place, especially if the cabinets are accessible to the public.  Microfilm
reels hold thousands of images, and so are convenient for long runs of
magaznes and newspapers, and are easier to keep in order, but can be
wasteful of drawer space, if they carry only a book or a few pamphlets on
just a couple of yards of film.

Let's not get into microcards and microprint.

The image of stock certificates and bonds piling up behind a microfilming
camera between one spring cleaning and the next is a useful reminder that
it's not just the present generation of money-manipulators who are careless
and incompetent.
Let's not get into over-paid, either.

GAT


On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 11:54 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

>  At 1/20/2014 06:35 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
> What are sheets of microfiche? My only experience with microfiche had
> them on rolls of tape.
>
>
> In my experience, "microfiche" is multiple images on a single film sheet,
> as I remember about 4 by 7 inches, read by moving the sheet from image to
> image in the viewer.  The OED has the same memory, except perhaps for
> size:  "A flat piece of film, usually the size of a standard index card,
> containing microphotographs of the pages of a book, periodical, catalogue,
> etc."
>
> "Microfilm" is what rolls on tape.
>
> Joel
> ------------------------------------------------------------ The American
> Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org




--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org