Tales from the Morgue: Technology advances

The Morgue Lady puts the film on a "reader/printer" and browses for an interesting story to share. She then prints the story and types it on the computer. Because the oldest papers were already old when they were first filmed, sometimes the best print is difficult to read. It is quite rare when a print from microfilm is clear enough that it can be scanned and converted to text.

Without this microfilm and the reader, the old stories would be lost forever.

This wonderful technology, while old and clunky in this digital age, has preserved newspapers, old books, tax records, legal documents and more for some time. 

So when the University of Arizona got a microfilm reader for the first time, it was a timesaver for anyone who did research there.

From the Arizona Daily Star, Jan. 4, 1940:

The microfilm reader has not yet gone the way of the dodo, and it won't until all companies can afford to have their film converted to digital files.

What would the UA librarian have thought if someone had told him in 1940 about eBooks?

The Morgue Lady still believes there is something lost when one cannot hold a real book and turn pages, but she still loves her eBook reader. How else can one go on vacation and carry hundreds of books in one hand?

Just don't tell her that books will one day be downloaded directly to the brain. What's the fun in that?