The report was made available in German in the fall of 1996 on the Internet and was published in January 1997. The U.S. Commission on Preservation and Access is pleased to republish the English version for distribution outside of Europe. The CPA and European Commission would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for its cooperation and the authors, Dr. Hartmut Weber and Dr. Marianne D rr, as well as the translator, Andrew Medlicott, for their work on the English version. The European and U.S. Commissions on Preservation and Access hope this publication will contribute to the development of balanced strategies for microfilming and digitization. Introduction Newspapers, books, manuscripts, and archives have for decades been filmed at public expense to protect them from the endogenous deterioration of paper, or from other causes of damage that threaten books and archival material, and to ensure the permanence of the information they contain.
Researchers use duplicate microfilms, rather than fragile originals, for their work.
The hectic developments in network and data technology, with their constantly improving capacity for the transmission of document images, open the way to new forms of use. The victory parade of the Internet and the vista of virtual digital libraries, offering ubiquitous and swift access of consistently high quality to documents, must in the future be incorporated into the concept of any preservation program. The group was to consist of librarians, archivists, and technical experts currently working in the field, and would explore the demands of quality assurance, and the possibilities and limits of the new techniques. The group concentrated on investigating the technical state of digitization of microfilm and t he changing compatibilities of microforms and digital conversion forms. Filming and digitization tests were carried out with standardized test materials and the results evaluated.