Microfilm

It's only on microfilm.

The library has the paper's archives on microfilm.

Can you show me how to use microfilm?

I am holding in my hand a microfilm of very highly confidential secret State Department documents.

On a Thursday morning at the state Hall of Records in Annapolis, Maryland, about 60 kilometers east of Washington, D.C., a dozen or so people were in the microfilm room, looking at photocopies of land deeds, tax rolls, and church records dating back to the 1630s, when Maryland was first founded as a British colony. Another 10–15 people were in the main hall, carefully transcribing documents often worm-eaten and brittle with age, the words within them sometimes grossly misspelled.

This detail made it easier, decades later, when I was browsing through reels of microfilms of The New York Times, to establish that morning’s date.

Power set up a camera in the British Museum and eventually microfilmed many pre-1640 English books that he selected from Pollard and Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue (STC) and other important works in the museum’s collections.