n.a device using light and magnification to allow users to view reduced-scale photographic images on filmRaney 1939, 148The other, employing a translucent screen and, therefore, direct light, is the Argus Microfilm Reader, manufactured by the International Research Corporation, Ann Arbor, Michigan and now sold at $87.50.AVR 1966, 294The superior DAGMAR SUPER Microfilm Reader gives... printed-page comfort when reading all sizes and types of microfilm.Information Design 1976, 382Soon after Information Design’s microfilm reader was introduced in 1973, it was rated “best” in side-by-side tests with virtually every 35mm roll film viewer in use. It’s still the easiest reader for patrons to use. And it’s still the only reader that offers you all of these advantages: a big 24″ screen that projects an entire newspaper page; an automatic film gate that protects your film from being scratched; full 360° image rotation.Speakman 1984, 170Because of the tremendous increase of use of microcopying of records and manuscripts, readers are an important element in a successful search. I do not mind using microfilm if it is of good quality, nor do I greatly mind using the type of microfilm readers that break the researcher’s neck and send all of us bifocal wearers reaching for our reading glasses. I do resent greatly, however, going into a repository to work and finding all the readers either in use or out of order. While I realize that numbers of users per day vary and machines do break down, to have none available for a researcher is, to me, an example of poor planning or serious mismanagement.Peterson 1984, 392If the records were machine-readable, genealogists could, through a telephone link, check the census, immigration lists, and ship manifests and could thus complete their research without battling lines for microfilm readers.Allison-Bunnell 1995, 277The provision of “no more than one image at a time” is unlikely to be a problem, since microfilm readers project only one image.Heald 1996, 96The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were characterized by a heightened interest in genealogy, but only since the 1970s and increasingly throughout the 1980s and 1990s has the interest been large-scale, so that now our reading rooms resonate with the whirring of microfilm readers and the excited chit-chat of new connections.Duff and Johnson 2003, 89–90Colleagues were an important source of information for nine of the ten participants. Participants discussed the type of information they were seeking with other genealogists because they were close at hand, they were using a microfilm reader close by when a question arose, for example, or because certain genealogists were particularly knowledgeable about records from a certain area.Brothman 2011, 415As Paul Valéry had foreseen, and akin to Roosevelt’s radio audiences, researchers no longer necessarily needed to leave their homes to come to the archives. Now, equipped with the constantly improving technology of microfilm readers, individuals could receive these practically imperceptible archives at home or “wherever you may be.”
Notes
Microfilm readers allow for viewing either microfilm or microfiche but not micro-opaque.
