"Quis custodes ipsos custodiet?"

"Quis custodes ipsos custodiet?" Juvenal

Or "Who's keeping time with the timekeepers daughter while the timekeeper's busy keeping time?":
Or "Wolf! Wolf!" he cried.

In this column in the January and April issues of 1990 I discussed the cost of searching for microfilms as part of the preservation microfilming process. Titles are searched to discover if they have been previously filmed so as to avoid duplicative filming. I reduced the costs of searching to a formula so they could be compared to the cost of filming and therefore clarify the whether and under what conditions searching was cost effective. Such reduction can, of course, be taken to absurdity and so I wrote a follow up published in Microform Review which discussed some of the qualifications and complexities that attend the evaluation of searching procedures. In doing so I made two points which I wish to follow up on here.

Copy or replacement?

The first regarded the quality of microform copies that are found when searching. There are questions we need to ask about the quality of the production and storage of the camera masters. As it stands now no one will intentionally duplicate the filming done by another agency. We have, in effect, made that single microfilm copy the master for everyone. This is a very radical and risky business. As the paper originals deteriorate and are replaced with film our whole dependence comes to rest on a single copy. Though there are copies of this master copy they are considered and treated as perishable. If the master films that we are all depending on to serve as a replacements for the originals were not produced and stored to proper standards we have taken a large step backwards not forwards in preservation.

Unbeknownst to me when I wrote for my concerns were being felt by a number of people in the field and some were taking steps to address the situation. The American Association of Law Libraries and the Research Libraries Group supported by the Commission on Preservation and Access are planning a survey of the practices of of the copanies, agencies and libraries that produce and store first generation master negatives. A pretest of the survey form has been completed. A report to the Commission on the pretest was written by Willis Meredith and Naomi Ronen and is available from the Commission. The potential benefits from this survey cannot be overrated. We all know the arguments for not duplicating filming. We probably cannot afford to proceed any other way. But do we also fully appreciate the risks? Have we taken adequate precautions to reduce them? The RLG survey should bring us a lot closer to knowing the answers to these questions.

Absolute trust, reasonable assurance

Our policies require us to place absolute trust in the producers and keepers of microfilms but we have no way of knowing that our trust is justified. If we agree that absolute trust should require at least reasonable assurance we must then ask how we might go about achieving a realistic and acceptable level of confidence in the agencies reporting microfilming to the standard indexes and catalogs. Surveying current practices will certainly raise the consciousness of both producers and buyers as well as bringing a basis of fact to the discussion. But more is needed than information and heightened awareness. Some pragmatic means of securing the quality and permanence of microfilm masters must be developed.

There are some who will say that self-interest and the demands of the market place are sufficient safeguards. Whatever the virtues of laissez-faire within the standard market place, they do not pertain here. Much of the filming being done is done by agents which are outside the commercial arena, i.e. libraries. Further, the policy of not duplicating previously done filming gives the original creator of the microfilm a virtual monopoly on the product. This, at least so far, has held true for commercial microfilmers as well as libraries and archives. There is generally only one source of microfilm available for any title whether or not it is still in copyright. This fact warps the usual economic considerations and reduces influence of competition. Buyers cannot choose among suppliers by the quality of their products. This undercuts the economic motivation for producing expensive preservation quality camera negatives.

By adopting a policy of not duplicating microfilming we have made each master microfilm a unique cultural property.

In the absence of any external safeguards we rely on the honor system. While I do not wish to impugn the honor of the libraries, archives and commercial firms which produce microfilm, it seems unfair to both producer and buyer to subject them to such a system. My misgivings about libraries are at least as great as those regarding commercial vendors. Indeed they are greater. For most libraries microfilming is a new venture at which they have been given scant training and in which they have, as yet, little experience. I cannot doubt their good intentions but when I see the quality of much of the cataloging they produce and the library binding they specify I am left with very little trust in their ability to withstand the temptation to cut corners to save money from inadequate budgets. Minimum level microfilming is exactly what we wish to avoid.

One look at my desk would prove to anyone that I am an anarchist at heart. I am, however, forced to say that in this case I believe that policing, perhaps in the form of an impartial agency that could examine and observe production and storage facilities on a regular schedule and certify which of them meet preservation microfilming standards, is justified. This agency might be created by any of a number of organizations. AIIM, RLG or the Commission on Preservation and Access, to name only a few, might serve as the sponsor. Here, too, the results of the RLG survey will prove valuable in determining whether this or some other solution is needed. The one thing that we can be sure of is the very great need for action. We depend too much on too little for complacency.

Redox redux

For those who feel that I am overstating the case a review of the literature on the problems of microfilm processing would be a sobering endeavor. Ellen McCrady's excellent article in Restaurator ("The history of microfilm blemishes" v. 6 no. 3-4 (1984) pp. 191-204) will convince anyone who doesn't already know it that the processing of preservation microfilm is complex, difficult and not fully understood. She recounts the process of finding the cause of what are now generally referred to as redox blemishes. It is instructive to read about the extreme care in processing that it takes to avoid this form of deterioration. It is not a level of care that cannot be reached but it is one which takes a concentrated effort to attain and constant vigilance to maintain. In proof of the complexity and difficulty of the problem is the fact that it will not go away. This is attested to in a recent article by James L. Wassell, ("Illini fighting redox," Inform v. 4 no. 5 (May 1990) pp. 26-30) indicates. Wassell does not state the cause of the blemishes and whether there is any indication that the measures taken to avoid them may be ineffective. For our purposes here that is not important. What is important is the fragility of the process. We cannot assume that all the problems, even those that have been extensively addressed, are solved. This is not the best of all possible worlds and it behooves us not to act as if it were.

The public interest

The second point that I made in the Microform Review article that I wish to expand here is closely related to the first. It arises from the question of the fate of films produced by micropublishers that go out of business. If a library decides not to film a particular title, perhaps even discards its originals, in favor of buying a copy from a micropublisher that later becomes defunct there is very serious concern for what occurs to the microfilm master. There is nothing to stop a bankrupt company from selling its film to recover the silver or just trashing it.

By adopting a policy of not duplicating microfilming we have made each master microfilm a unique cultural property. The fate of that film is a matter of public concern and its destruction or loss is against the public interest. In the same way that historic and cultural landmarks are legally protected, even if privately owned, so should preservation microfilm masters have some sort of restrictions on their use and disposal. Are not the landmarks of our intellectual history as worthy of safeguard as our historical buildings? Are not the edifices of the mind as important as the creations of our hands?

The last point I wish to make is that the problems and uncertainties I have described are not intrinsic to microfilm. They evolve from the nature of non-redundant copying. Redundancy, which our preservation programs avoid, is an important feature of any good communication system. Purposeful duplication makes a system more secure and more accurate. Preservation is a communication system--it is the past and present communicating to the future. Without redundancy, without multiple copies, which I will grant we cannot afford, we must take extraordinary steps to insure accuracy and security. We have done fairly well on the former by creating microfilms with good imaging and bibliographic control. In terms of security we have done virtually nothing. We have no assurance that the microfilm masters we accept as preservation replacements are stable enough or stored well enough to deserve the term permanent. Nor can we be sure that they will be kept in perpetuity by those that own them.

Let me not finish on a note of gloom and doom. Though I do mean to stress the risks, I do not wish to overstate them. There is good reason to be optimistic. The Image Permanence Institute is doing important and productive research in microfilming. (See, for instance, the letter from James M. Reilly, Director of IPI in Inform v. 4, no. 9 (October 1990) p. 5). This will give solid qualitative and quantitative data on which to revise old standards or create new ones. The RLG survey, too, has begun a dialog between producers and buyers of microfilm that should prove fruitful in many ways and on many levels. We may have put all our eggs in one basket but we are in good shape to make the basket secure.

This article first appeared Conservation Administration News (CAN)
No. 45, April 1991 as the Feature "Out of the Question."