By Maura Coonan

Microfilm is often touted as a thing of the past – has the average person even used it? Does anyone from Gen Z and Alpha even know what it is? While microfilm actually is very much a format of the past (microforms have been around since the mid-1800s!), it has still managed to keep one foot in the door of the present, especially for those working in libraries, archives, and museums. We’ll take a closer look as to why that is, with the holdings of the Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) as an example, and what the impact is on preservation and access to library and archival material.

The rise and fall (but not collapse) of microfilm

As mentioned above, the creation of microformats actually began in the mid 19th century. The rise and continued popularity of the format, at least on the staff side (more on that later), continued, spiking in the mid to late 20th century, and was especially popular for newspapers. By the 1970s, microfilm had become the preferred preservation format for microfilm.

The popularity of this format was due to a few factors. To start, the creation of microfilm saved on space, and “the technology to read microfilm is first of all rather simple, and secondly rather generic.” Despite its popularity and high use, patrons weren’t really a fan of the format, and was still being resisted into the mid 1990s due to: the inconveniences of access, equipment needed (and issues with the equipment), and its time-consuming nature for both browsing and searching for specific information.

So, in the 2000s, when formats started migrating to the digital in larger amounts, unsurprisingly, use significantly declined within libraries and archives. And yet, microfilm never completely disappeared nor became obsolete. It has persisted, and still has managed to have a foot in the format game in 2026.

IHRCA’s holdings

The IHRCA has over 7000 microfilm reels in our collections! They come in both 35mm and 16mm reels, but 35mm is most common and makes up the bulk of our holdings.

The reels, much like camera film, have both a positive and a negative, and the IHRCA has examples of both. For the IHRCA, the negatives signify reels that the archives created itself, and are used to create positive reels.

The negatives in the IHRCA were created from original records, often in collaboration with other institutions, back when we were still known as the IHRC. Many of these were reels that the IHRC marketed and sold to other institutions.

In the early 2010s, the IHRC’s local microfilm vendor retired, and likely due to the decline in popularity of microfilm creation/reproduction, no one took over the business. This ended the IHRC’s service. However, the high cost to IHRC staff, and dwindling interest in the format, made it an easy decision to not look for an out-of-state vendor to continue the service. It would have been a service the IHRC would have likely removed in the near future had not the business closure occurred.

That being said, the majority of this significant collection is of positive reels. They were thus mostly created by other institutions, many coming from Central Research Libraries (CRL), the New York Public Library, and many historical societies across the US.

The microfilm reels in the IHRCA’s collection are overwhelmingly of ethnic and global language newspapers, but a small percentage contain manuscript collections. Despite being mostly positive reels, and not all unique, many of the newspaper titles are now found in few, if any other, institutions today, and often with much smaller runs of issues than we have.

Regardless of the noted continued decline in interest (perhaps forced interest is more accurate?) in microfilm use, use of the IHRCA’s microfilm reels is still quite popular today – staff go down to the caverns to retrieve these reels for patrons about once a week. This number would likely be higher if we were able to provide more via Interlibrary loan (ILL) and/or share reels remotely, but library policies and staffing constraints to providing in-depth research services often prevent us from fulfilling many microfilm requests for our remote patrons.

Late in 2025, the Libraries’ Digital Library Service (DLS) staff announced a rollout of offering microfilm digitization services. This is an exciting new offering, and while there are obvious concessions made when digitizing microfilmed records over their originals (although that will often not be an option), especially when it comes to image and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) quality, it will be interesting to see how this impacts the IHRCA’s microfilm use, holdings, and remote access opportunities going forward.

Microfilm today in 2026; the pros and cons

Today, microfilm is still a very strong preservation format; it requires very little maintenance, and can last hundreds of years if it is stored properly. When considering the space advantage it provides over printed documents, microfilm in today’s world is still an affordable and strong preservation format, perhaps one of the best. It is also a cost-effective option, especially when the only identical alternative may be access through an expensive online subscription.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, newspapers often were, and still are, popular candidates for microfilming. When the paper quality is high, paper is a strong preservation format, but newspapers have and still are printed on highly acidic paper. Newspapers are quite ephemeral in nature – they are/were meant to be read and then disposed of – allowing for low quality paper, but that makes them especially difficult to preserve in their original format.

Microfilm can at times be loaned out (the IHRCA will loan out reels we have the negatives to), making access to archival holdings possible when traditionally, not a lot of archival materials are eligible for Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Finally, there are some things that microfilm can provide that digitized records, especially newspapers, can’t provide. For one, due to copyright, many digitized newspapers can’t include images/photographs, advertisements. Second, and perhaps most importantly, depending on a user’s needs, because of the forced scrolling through consecutive issues, microfilm use allows for a gained context and “ability to allow users to make connections between each issue of newspaper.” This is quite hard to replicate when looking at newspapers (or even digitized records) online.

Nevertheless, the format does come with some major downsides that are important to take into consideration. The quality of microfilm varies quite widely, and can be tedious to deal with when one has to constantly be adjusting the contrast and brightness on a microfilm machine, and either printing or downloading one page from the viewer at a time.

Microfilm is also not immune from degradation, and can experience things like shrinking and/or vinegar syndrome, which make the film unusable. Additionally, the format is just plain unpopular. Even with people who are familiar with the format, and its merits, it is often chosen as a last resort, and used begrudgingly. We have even had many IHRCA patrons share that they would prefer to use the print (regardless of condition issues) over microfilm.

The biggest downfall microfilm has however, is the access and ease of use by patrons. Microfilm can’t compare when it comes to the physical accessibility of digitized records, in terms of both location and technology, especially digitized newspapers. Microfilm use, at a minimum, requires access to a microfilm machine, and also the reels themselves, which as you have now read, may exist at only one, or a handful of institutions.

Digitization also often allows for other tech incorporations like OCR (and thus, screen readers), which makes searching through issues much less time-consuming, and more available to a larger user group. Physical space is at a premium at Andersen Library, as with most places that have microfilm collections, and the physical space saved definitely weighs in digitization’s favor.

Additionally, while the storage of digitized records is by no means cost free, the cost of square footage is usually higher than the cost of terabytes, and doesn’t have added costs of the need for continual digital maintenance, like media migrations. These are all things that will need to be taken into consideration as discussions into both format preservation and access move into 2027 and beyond.

Conclusion

If there was a preservation format that had the longevity and cost-effectiveness of microfilm, and the accessibility of digitized material, we would have a winning format. But until this happens, libraries, archives, and museums will each need to weigh the positives and negatives, deciding what’s best for their collections, in that instance, and try to find that balance of preservation and access.

Microfilm still has a foot in that door today, but that may change tomorrow, or may be different from one institution to the next. Archivists often don’t like to (can’t) give one encompassing answer for many topics related to their profession, and it looks like the continued use of microfilm has too fallen prey to our commonly used phrase, ‘it depends’.