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Re: quality assessment of LDS microfilms



I would also like to hear from others on the list as to their experience. I
received microfilm from Heritage Quest last week and I did not intend to
view it (because of the large number of reels that were involved) as I
assumed the work would meet my standards as they are a very well known
company. Boy was I surprised when I viewed the microfilm. Some of the pages
were fine, and some were awful. Apparently, they did not check the focus and
some pages are illegible only because of the focus. What bothers me most is
that it seems all microfilm originates from one source as it is highly
unlikely that every company that would like to microfilm items would be
allowed to do this and if there is only one shot -- quality must be assured
on every page that is filmed because of the importance of the documents or
the potential importance because of the age of the original, etc..,

I suppose I am complaining and wondering if professional archivist are
involved with these projects and to what degree -- head of the project or
simply a consultant. If the documents are owned by the government, do they
allow any companies to come in??  Because of amount of profit that could be
generated from microfilming historical documents and also the large number
of volunteers -- that as you pointed out -- may or may not do a decent job,
let alone the right job - and I don't know if there is a second chance for a
large number of these items to be refilmed with an archivist on board as
project supervisor or manager??

Jackie Saturley
saturlej@libcoop.net


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