_microfiche_: was ist das?

[George Thompson]

I spent maybe 20 years reading 18th & 19th C newspapers almost every day.
Would still be reading them every day, in fact,  if I hadn't moved out here
to the frontier.  After a stretch, reading them on microfilm would drive me
batty, but then, a day or two spent reading from the original paper at the
N-YHS and trying to make a note of something printed near the upper gutter
of the volume, while holding the notebook below the lower edge of the
volume, would have me yearning for the film again.
Meanwhile, I never encountered a run of a newspaper on microfiche, so I
suppose that the trade thinks as I do, that having 6 months worth of a
4-pages-an-issue, 6-issues-a-week newspaper on a single reel of film must
be more convenient than having that same file on a wad of fiche.
I now mostly use digitized files, since that's what's available to me where
I am now.  That format I don't find very convenient for reading through the
paper, one day and then the next day, and the next after that -- no more
convenient than a spool of film.  It of course offers the possibility of
searching, but my experience shows me that key-word searches of newspaper
texts digitized after printing will retrieve perhaps one-third of what is
in fact there.  Indeed, probably saying that these searches only miss 2 out
of 3 appearances of what is being searched for is too generous.  I've not
tried to quantify this rigorously, because my experience also teaches me
that the people who ought to be interested not only aren't interested, but
very strongly don't want to be told that a technology that is convenient
for librarians and saves researchers from having to exert themselves over
their research in fact doesn't work very well.

GAT




On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>wrote:

> As a librarian and library user, this is the first time I ever heard
> anyone refer to microfilm as "convenient."  Microfiche is far easier to use.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> George Thompson [george.thompson at nyu.edu]
> Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 12:40 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: _microfiche_: was ist das?
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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