teaching Microforms in Chemical Education T h e teacher of chemistry faces an extraordiuarily difficult problem-keeping informed-'and sharing with his students elements of new and relevant information which may be supplementary to a text or lab manual. The problem suggests that new forms of reproducing and disseminating chemical information might be adapted by the teaching community. The sharp increase in the amount of information available t o the academic chemist and students of chemistry is becoming increasingly apparent. Suhscrihers to ACS publications alone receive about 40,000 pages per year. There were 1000 scientific journals in the world in 1850, 10,000 in 1900, and 100,000 in 1950; now over a quarter million articles are prepared per year for the chemical literature alone. If the trend to produce more publications continues, there may be a million journals by the year 2000. One means of making more efficient use of the vast available body of information is to determine when and where the information can best be used. The concept of the library may have to be re-evaluated and the undergraduate laboratory, study, living, classroom, and research areas become more dependent on decentralized information resources designed to give access to information which has only immediate application (see Fig. 1). Literature searches by the undergraduate student, for example, could be limited to relevant data,
in locations immediately accessible for the laboratory, if the purpose was to have him compare original experimental results with published values, thus making more efficient use of time and facilities. Advanced syst,ems of reducing printed or written material to easy-to-store and retrieve forms-microforms-can be configured in several vays based on the reduction ratio of original to copy. The microform conrept suggests that a student's entire personal library can be stored in a shoebox-sized container vit,h dramatic economy. Microform is the generic term used to describe all systcms that use micro images (see Fig. 2). Microfilm is usually 16 mm unperforated film a t least 100 feet. long containing about 26 images per foot. It is frequently supplied in rartridges for insertion into appropriate cameras or readers. llticrojche are plastic sheets frequently in a 4 X 6-in. size which can contain up to 60 document. images. ,lfiero,jacliels are similar in appearance to microfiche except the transparent jacket has pockets which house microfilm strips or chips (single frames) from microfilms. Aperture cards consist of single frames of 35 mm microfilm mounted in openings on IBM-type punched cards. Ultra-micro~7cheare physically the same dimension as microfirhe, except, as detailcd in the following discussion, the higher degree oE magnification possihle in the system allom several thousand images to be stored on a single sheet. The choice of a microform systrm to supplement or replace existing-&stems of storing and retrieving informat,ion will depend upon the type of informat,ion to he reprodured, the length of time a copy is t,o I I ~retained, thc number of people using the microform, the number of copies required, and t,he easc of u~dat,illethc - copics. /
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Figure 1. Simple and immediate access to informotion where it has immediate application is posrible using microform systems such as the NCR PCMI .y.tem. over3000 for con be %toredon 4 X 6-in. cord, and a n y single picture located in less than one second. or funher information contact The Notional C o I Register Compony, lndvrtriol Products Division, Dayton,Ohio.
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Types of Microforms Ultra-microforms. The PCMll Microform system is s n example of s new process which makes i t possible to reproduce up to 3200 8.X x 11-in. pages on a 4 X 6-~n. transparency. It has been developed by the National Cash Register Company, Industrial Products Divi-
' "PCMI" is a registered tradrmark of The National Cash Register Ca.
The microfiche format is standard with ERIC, NASA, and AEC, and with the government agencies alone about 100 million microfiche have been distributed in this countrv. " , so there is an on-going commitment to this particular system. Mic'rojackels potentially offer more flexibility in editing or up-dating material as single frames or strips of microfilm can be replaced in the field. Microfilm. Of the many formats in the microform systems, tho rolls of 35 mm film in bulky, inaccessible readers are probahly the sterotype of information stored in s reduced form rememherod by many. New forms of microfilm in 16 mm gauge film use cartridges to simplify handling and many contain up to 2600 documents on a 100-ft roll weighing just 6 or;. Motorized film tranaports on modern microfilm readers facilitate image retrieval within seconds. Film transport speeds are adjustable from 10-18 sec per 100 ft of microfilm on Iiodak microfilm readers, for example. The 16 mm microfilm is useful as s. production medium for a final system in which release copies are printed in microfiche form, or strips of tho film mounted in acetate film jackets. Aperture Cards. The high storage density of microfilm oan be combinod with the fast retrieving capabilities of the computer in R C V C ways. ~ The simplest system mounts a 35 mm microfilm frame containing up to eight 8% X 16-in. document imagcs within a computer punched c u d , image reduction is 10-30X.
Figure 2. Microforms may contoin from 3 0 0 0 images lPCMl cord, left1 to 6 0 images on o dandard microfiche sheet (centerl, or ringle framer can be stored in o p e r t r e punch cards for machine osrirted sorting or retrieval (right1 Proiection-type readers can be conRgured to project the microform image on a self-contained screen or onto a projection screen far closroom or seminar use.
nion, Dayton, Ohio. The dissemination copies are magnified t o the original document size and read on specially designed reader units which are fiimilar in appearance t o a small TV set. At the reduction ratios achieved (250:l) the equivalent of eight average books can be recorded on a 4 X 6-in. piece of film. This means that a filo of 1,000,000 book napes can be contained in a stack of film cards lesd than 6 in. hi&.- A complete library of spectra could be stored on 12 microform cards. Indexing of t h r individual imaws on a P C M I card is h v a row-letter and column-number coor&nate system. An almdst effortless overstor movement will allow the entire transparency assembly to he moved in the z or y direction, singly or in combination, until the desired image has been positioned for viewing. This simple techniquc can locate any of 3200 pages in about one second. Tho dissemination copies are laminated between heavy ~
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suitable substrate. ~nlik;!silver halide film. nhotochr&nic films %re grain free and are capable of very high'resolution. They will retain images with resolution greater than 1000 lines per millimeter. Presentlv. hard eonv or microfilm innuts must be format. Mierqfiche. Very popular systems using silver halide or diazo films have 18 or 2 0 X reduction ratios to produce individual units of information an nlastic sheets which mav contain uv to 60 images on s 4 X 6-in: sheet. Microfiche ra&s in size from 3 X 7 to 6 X 8-in. sheets; the governmcntrindistrial standard (COSATI-NMA) fiche is 4 X 6 in. An eve-leeible headinn includes the classification or identifica&n"num'bcr, documeh title, author, or other basic infarmain length, "trailer"' tion. For documents more t h i n 60 fiehc we used, these have a n abbreviated heading and a maximum eanaeitv of 72 naner. Fiche mav be nmduced with either Ceauirement, Ggative fiche are used to a&
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white paper copy,
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"semi-micro" st'draee technique, in genera1 any standard system
the operator positions n painter giide between the g o p & reference frames on the index card, and the desired images are displayed for immediate reference on an 11 X 16-in. mewing screen
Figure 3. There i s a brood range of equipment systems oroilable to prodwe microformr and retrieve the information. The Eastmon Kodak Recordak RV-2 Microfilm camera ond PFCD microform reader ore example. of a system which offers the teacher great flexibility in preparing and distributing resource informotion. Complete Informotion is available from the Eostman Kodok Company, Bwinesr Systems Markets Division, Rochester, N.Y. 14650.
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46, Number 4,April 1969
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Ipifty-two columns are nvaihble on the card for punching. The ~.e:ulersof THIS JOURNAL are familiar with the mechanisms and :~dv:intagcsof preparin~and using punched cards; the combination of microform storage and the sorting and compilation power of dntn proccssina rqi~ipment suggest cfficicnt ~rnan-michine intrt.:wtions.
Master Preparation. Documents to be converted to microforms can be photographed using simple-tooperate and inexpensive microfilm cameras. The basic production medium is a special 16 mm film, and for production originating in the school, offers considerable flexibility in editing if a microfiche or microjacket is to be the final release form. Teacher operable microfilm cameras such as the Kodak Recordak2 RV-2 (Fig. 3) require only that a document he centered on a scribed copyboard and the operator press An exposure trip button; focus, shutter speed, and film advance are automatic or preset. Documents can be sent to the manufacturer's production site or the producers of microforms will accept strips of microfilm, single frames, or complete rolls of film to make up a printing master. Microform Readers. Information on microforms has little practical value unless suitable readers are conveniently available and project an image which is easily read (Fig. 4). Readers vary in cost depending on the system, e.g., the higher the degree of magnification used in the system or the more sophisticated the indexing system, the more expensive the reader. Readers can be purchased, rented, or leased from several manufacturers. The advantage of the less-expensive readers would be to encourage proliferation of equipment throughout a department and dorm areas, as well as traditional reading rooms. More expensive readers have printout devices which give hard copy equal in size to the original document for about 106 per copy. I n addition to identifying microform readers by magnification power which may range in the PCMI system from 150X to 20X for microfiche and aperture cards, the reading screen size, projection bulb type, cooling system, and indexing system are factors which influence cost and performance. A valuable survey of available microfiche readers and printers appeared in the Fall 1967 issue of the National Microfilm Association Journal, and reprints of this stvdy, by Tate and Wolf, are available at 506 each from the National Microfilm Association, 250 Prince George St., P.O. Box 386, Annapolis, Md. 21404. Also, the June/July 1968 edition of Information and Records Management, 41 East 28th St., New York, N. Y. 10016, pp. 39-42, features a pictorial directory of some 40 microfiche readers and reader-printers: "Microfiche Directory: A Current Listing of Readers and ReaderPrinters." The ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Media and Technology a t the Institute for Communication Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, has offered to provide a sample ERIC microfiche and information on how to evaluate microfiche readers. Copyrights. Potentially a major barrier to effective use of multiple copies of selected information in chemical education is copyrights. Extrapolations from existing laws will not serve systems of the scope suggested in this article. The general copyright revision "Reoardak" is a registered trademark of Eastman Kodak.
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Figure 4. Microfiche read from inexpensive desk-top reoders con be d useful and provocotire oddition L o r i d e orray of resource materials available to the student. Descriptive information on this Atlantic Model F66 unit is ovoiloble from Atlantic Microfilm Corp., Spring Valley, N.Y.. or the 3 M Company Microfllm Sydems Division, St. Paul, Minn, 5 5 1 19.
bill (S. 597) is before the US. Senate for consideration in 1969. A separate bill (8. 2216) was passed by the Senate and is up for House consideration t o set up a national commission "to study and compile data on the reproduction and use of copyrighted works of authorship (1) in automatic systems capable of storing, processing, retrieving, and transferring information, and (2) by various forms of machine reproduction." Any copyright law that removes the incentive from a creative individual to write a book, paper, or produce instruction materials or invest profitably in the manufacture and distribution could destroy the field. Microphotographic storage undoubtedly will be included in any proposed solutions to the burgeoning information problem. To encourage user acceptance and encourage the greatest flexibility in design of systems acceptable to the community, the following points might be considered: 1. Information stored in microforms can be indexed with equal facility by nearly all present indexing systems. 2. Maximum storage density is achieved. 3. Graphic, photographic, and alphanumeric information may he stored with equal ease. 4. The mechanics of retrieval are greatly simplified by having information in compact forms. 5 . Microform systems can be interfaced effectively with electronic data processing systems. 6. The concept of individual libraries containing easily up-dated information may facilitate designs of new instructional facilities and encourage greater use of chemical literature. General Bibliography (1) CAIRNS, ROBERT TV., Cand E News,46,48 (November, 1968). (2) KENYON, RICHARD L., Cand E News, 46,5 (December, 1968). (3) MANKHAUS, EDWARD J., "The Many New Images of Microfilm." Reprint from Business Automation, October, 1968, available from Emtman Kodak Co., Business Systems Markets Division, Rochester, New York 14650. (4) WEINBERG, ALVINM., J. CAEM.EDUC.,45, 74 (1968). (5) "A New Publication Method, the PCMI Mioroform System," National Cash Register Co., Dayton, Ohio. (6) SDC Magazine, 11:10, wailable from System Development Corp., 2500 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, Calif. 90406.
