The Metropolitan Library is the main public library of a large city, with smaller branch libraries spread throughout the urban area. The library plays a mentoring role in the region, its professional staff providing training in cataloguing and electronic access. The library director, Susan Green, provides general leadership to all the librarians in the region.

The Metropolitan Library has staff engaged in preservation activities in its technical services department. The library has a modest microfilming operation, with an old but reliable Recordak MRD2 camera, and various processing equipment provided years before by UNESCO. This unit microfilms city newspapers, but production is low, as equipment is constantly breaking and spare parts are difficult to find. The library has had agreements to provide copies of newspaper microfilm to libraries overseas on a cost-recovery basis, but orders have fallen off because of inconsistent quality and an inability to provide film in a timely fashion.

The problem
Green feels that the library is not fulfilling its responsibility to preserve newspapers and engage with overseas libraries in an activity that will directly benefit the library. She knows that the microfilming unit needs to be improved and the equipment updated, but the government has been reluctant to provide needed funds. What should Susan do?

Possible solution
Green is in a good position to establish a regional cooperative preservation center, the heart of which would be a modern microfilming operation. A good strategy would be to conduct market research among libraries nationally and overseas, to prove the need for such an undertaking. Regional libraries would be invited to have their local newspapers filmed centrally at the Metropolitan Library along with city newspapers.

Green would develop a proposal that would articulate the size of the new microfilming operation, the type and cost of equipment, and the size and composition of staff. Some thought would be given to the purchase of hybrid microfilm/scanning cameras so that newspapers could be accessed remotely. The proposal would be bolstered by endorsements from scholars as well as regional, national, and foreign libraries. An important part of the proposal would be providing assurance that, once established with modern equipment, the operation would be self-sustaining through cost-recovery sales of microfilm.