RSSBlast from the Past
March 5th, 2007 | View Comments
I requested a couple of dissertations from Interlibrary Loan recently in the course of writing my never-ending lit review paper. I got the e-mail notice that they’d arrived, so I hopped over to the library, handed my card to the guy at the circulation desk, and waited.
He came back, not with two stacks of paper, but with two small boxes. Labeled “microfilm.”
Me: This…is it?
Staff Guy: I guess so!
Me [turning the boxes over in my hand as if they’re some strange archaeological specimen]: Oh! Okay! Um, thanks?
I have some vague recollection of having used microfilm to look at old news articles once upon a time in like, third grade, but that’s it. And there’s a distinct possibility that that vague recollection is not based in reality, but is reconstructed from random references to microfilm from books and movies littered throughout my long-term memory.
In an age when grad students complain about having to physically go to the library, check out a physical journal, and scan to pdf, getting papers on microfilm is mind-boggling.
Yvonne posted this on March 5th, 2007 @ 3:02pm in Graduate School | Permalink to "Blast from the Past"
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2. Yvonne » March 5th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
“How am I supposed to take notes?” was my second question, right after “where can I find a microfilm reader?” I have a similar note-taking system, where I scribble lots of incoherent things right on the relevant pages. I hope there’s some way to scan microfilm into pdf.
1. Styleygeek » March 5th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Heh. I too am totally weirded out by such dark-age technology. My list of refs I need to look at for my lit review includes four books that the library only has on microfilm, and I am too chicken to try and view them. I have no idea where the library keeps its microfilm, nor where the readers are, nor how to work them should I find one. And I suspect that my usual system of note-taking (photocopy most relevant pages and make notes about everything else in the margins/on the back) is not going to cut it in the microfilm universe.