Improving Access to Latin American Microfilm

LASER March, 2004Teresa Chapa, UNC Chapel HillEmily Stambaugh, Wake Forest Univ.

Microfilm is underused

Stats about microfilm holdings and declining microfilm usage in general.

If available, stats about specific Latin American microfilm usage. 

Reason for declining usage: what’s your theory?

A wealth of information is going untapped.

How can we improve access?

Make the indexes to microfilm collections searchable electronically.

Consider the user’s questions:1. Where can I find newspapers or

pamphlets around this time period for this country?

2. I’m looking for a specific title…3. Diplomatic records related to country,

entity, period. - or - int’l relations b/w country X and country Y

Improving access…

Catalog / MARC records / WorldCat Web. Union catalogs by subject/area

studies Electronic Indexes and Databases Reference Librarians

What tools can libraries use to provide access to content?

Examples of tools Catalog: http://www.lib.unc.edu,

http://library.tulane.edu/index.php ex. Ti=“princeton university latin american pamphlet”

Union Catalog: http://lal.tulane.edu/lasermicro.html , find in page “latin american pamphlet”

Electronic Indexes and Databases: -UNC-CH LAIR Microfilm Database. http://www.lib.unc.edu/cdd/crs/international/latin/microforms/index.php

Vendor on-line guides -Scholarly Resources on-line guides: http://www.scholarly.com/guides/Guidetitle.html-Primary Source Media http://microformguides.gale.com/?psm=guides

Print guides- examples

What direction might we take?

Pros Subject access by

conventional LCSH Accessible through the

catalog, a familiar e-tool for the user.

Indexing done by experts (catalogers, microfilm producers)

Cons Some sets lack MARC

records Lack of analytic

cataloging – item level access

Does not allow for cross-institutional searching/access

Does not group content for area studies

Catalog/MARC Records/WorldCat

What direction might we take?

Pros Serves as a cross-

institutional guide. Conducive to cooperative collecting

Maintained cooperatively

Groups subject/area studies content

Cons No subject access,

some country level access

No item level access Access policy to

microfilm unclear Researchers unfamiliar

with the electronic location of the union catalog.

Web. Union Catalogs

What direction might we take?

Pros Cross-institutional

searching Groups subject/area

studies content May provide item level

access May use MARC records

or other metadata standard

Cons Subscription cost may

be high Heavy investment in IT

for programming and indexing

May bypass our experts (catalogers)

Electronic Indexes and Databases

Possible solution / Question for LASER

Shall we create an electronic search tool that allows users to search across microfilm indexes, like an abstracts-and-citations database?

One stop shopping: a comprehensive finding aid for researchers to find microfilmed content specific to Latin America.

Discussion

Points to consider: What do you think about engaging in such a

project? Start by monitoring usage? Involve microfilm vendors? OCLC? Purchase MARC records with microfilm

collections. Role of our catalogers Digitization requirements Level of access and delivery. ILL? IT commitment Organizational structure for on-going

maintenance