Many of our digital collections were created from microfilm surrogates, which is to say that the original print collection was at some point microfilmed (mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) for sale to libraries. Our own library bought many of these microfilm collections. Because it’s so much less expensive to digitize from microfilm (than from print originals), and because digitizing from microfilm spares those print originals from unnecessary wear and tear, many of our digital collections were created from these microfilm surrogates. You might be wondering how to determine whether a collection was digitized from microfilm. One good sign is if the documents in the collection are displayed in black-and-white (especially low bit-depth black-and-white) rather than color. Collections digitized directly from original print documents will usually display those documents in color. For example, the following: Continue reading “What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?” →