But the crucial lack of understanding of the needs of scholars in the decisions behind imposing these limits of access are matters of serious concern. Microfilm is a very poor substitute for the real thing in terms of legibility. More seriously, all palaeographical and codicological analysis is rendered totally impossible. The rationale for such an indiscriminate policy is not clear. Certainly, in the case of a very frail book, such as the sixth-century Codex Bezae in Cambridge, it is understandable that one should satisfy oneself with the facsimile if at all possible.
None is offered to the reader.
There is no clear indication anywhere that this may happen and whether it concerns particular categories of manuscript, or manuscripts with particular numbers, whether it is confined to those manuscripts which have been catalogued, judged to be at risk, or what. Substituting microfilm may simply be the Cult of Technology carried to its logical conclusion. Many, after all, do maintain that screens, rolls of microfilm, microfiches and CD-ROM, are the technology of the future. The microfilm policy may also have something to do with a monstrous offspring of Security and Conservation, namely, the Cult of the Book. Possibly, therefore, some practices have been introduced, not as a consequence of conservators' advice so much as out of reverence for the books as a work of art, as museum pieces, and as objects worth considerable sums of money.