Techniques and Policies of Documentary Reproduction
A note on the text: This text was circulated as a memorandum on JCMR letterhead (Doc. 9847 (1938-06-24): RCB, “Techniques and Policies of Documentary Reproduction” (JCMR/62-memoranda)). The file copy has a very long list of cc’s written in the left margin (some dated in late June or early July), including Jesse Shera.
Citation: Robert C. Binkley, “Techniques and Policies of Documentary Reproduction,” International Federation for Documentation, Quarterly Communications 6, no. 1 (1939): 12–15.
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[T1] Not since the invention of printing have the arts of communication been subjected to so stupendous a technological impact as that which comes upon them today. On the one hand, radio reaches the masses without the use of writing; on the other hand, new techniques in the graphic arts give to written texts a special accessibility they have never before possessed. Whether the radio will operate to preserve or unloose1 the bonds of thought that unite the world’s intellectual commonwealth is a choice that lies beyond our jurisdiction; but the effect of the new techniques in the graphic arts upon this world commonwealth will be determined by the policies adopted by the agencies of scholarship, librarianship, and archival science that are represented in this very Congress.
[T2] The use of writing in the world of thought is normalized in four procedures: correspondence, publication, circularization, and deposit. Correspondence is usually by a letter, – a unique document going from a writer to a reader. Publication is normally on the scale of 2000 or more copies of an identical text, distributed by sale to readers directly, or serviced to them indirectly through libraries. Intermediate between correspondence and publication is the procedure of circularization, often in a few scores of copies, in mimeograph form. This procedure is often used for committee reports and other internal documents of scholarship. Deposit ordinarily involves the accumulation of one copy each of many texts, printed or manuscript, collected or archival, in a place where they can be consulted. The essence of all these procedures is communication from writer to reader, whether the communication be immediate or deferred, to one reader or to many, to known persons or to persons unknown, and whether the men of the past communicate with the men of the present or the men of the present communicate with the men of the future. Post office, publisher, bookseller, librarian, and archivist are all administrators of the communication of writings.
[T3] There are indeed some property tenures vested at different points along these channels of communication. They are like the tolls along the river, some of them necessary to keep the channel open, some of them functionally piratical. But in general it can be said that thoughts are still of all things in the world the most nearly free, that most of the written texts upon which thought is recorded are freely disclosed to those who would examine them, and that people who hold ideas worthy of expression feel rather an urge to express them and share them than to withhold them from the world.
[T4] The costs and uses of the different processes for the communication of texts vary among themselves, but taken together they should form a system. In this system we might say that printing and publication as we have known it can be likened to expensive concrete highway construction for roads that are heavily travelled; mimeograph and planograph are like the less expensive surfaces for roads that are more lightly travelled; and blueprint and micro-copying are the dirt roads, the footpaths, and the trails that reach everywhere.
[T5] The great contribution of printing to the system of communication was its ability to convey the same text to many readers, situated at many different places, at costs much below those incurred in the copying of manuscripts. This is still the function of printing and publication; their place among the channels of communication is not challenged where this situation obtains. The technology and accountancy of printing and publication define with great accuracy the situations to which they are applicable, – namely, those in which 2000 book purchasers are willing to share among themselves the costs of making and distributing a book.
[T6] The contribution of the so-called near-print processes – hectograph, mimeograph, planograph – to the system of communication lies in their ability to distribute texts when the recipients are numbered in scores or a few hundred only. For instance, there is now being compiled in the United States a comprehensive inventory of local archives and church records. The inventories when completed will fill many hundreds of thousands of pages. In every community there is need of the archives of that community, but the needs of national scholarship are met by having a complete set of this inventory in about 100 depositories strategically located throughout the country. It would be a misuse of the printing technique to incur the cost of printing these inventories when the number of copies required falls in this range, therefore they are being mimeographed.
[T7] Concerning every text that is put into the channel of communication, the question properly arises: Where is it to go; how many ought to receive it? However this question be answered, that is to say, whether the transmission of 20 or of 20,000 copies will fulfill the purposes of communication, there is a technique of reproduction appropriate to the circumstance.
[T8] If the channel of communication is to be kept open by levying upon the recipients of texts their pro-rata share of the costs of the whole edition, there are two ways of doing this. The first of these has generally been followed in the past, namely, to print the text and fix a price at which the number of book purchasers actually entering the market will pay the whole cost of production. But experience in the publishing industry shows that book purchasers will not ordinarily assume their pro-rata share of the publication if there are less than 1000 or 2000 buyers. The second method is to estimate the number of potential purchasers and the price they would be willing to pay, and then multiply the text by a technique and in an edition that would fit the estimate.
[T9] For each technique, whether printing or near-printing, and for each variant of format, there is an edition size at which production costs per copy touch the level at which book buyers will enter the market. Estimates based on American costs yield the following results: At a production cost pet copy of $1.50 per 100,000 words, printed books must be issued in an edition of 550 copies; planographed books in editions of 250; mimeographed ones, 115 copies; and hectographed ones, 90 copies. If a text for which there is to be circulation of 115 copies only is printed the production cost of each copy will be not $1.50, but more nearly $7.50. At such production costs, recipients will not pay their share, and circulation dries up.
[T10] These estimates cover manufacturing costs only. In the publishing industry, costs of distribution are incurred in order to bring about the sharing of the costs of production. In some cases a communication will actually be cheaper and more effective if no attempt is made to recoup production costs from recipients. Letters and circulars are ordinarily communicated in this way. In fact, is it not our experience that when we wish to get action upon a document, we usually communicate the document directly to the person whose action is desired, without asking him to share the cost of making the copy? This principle cannot and should not be extended to all communications, but it is quite possible that many texts now published and sold as monographs would more effectively fulfill their purpose, at less cost to their producer, if they were simply mimeographed, circulated to the known specialists in the field, and deposited for reference in certain libraries.
[T11] In all of these processes – printing and near-printing – there is always a first cost (setting the type, preparing the planograph plate, making the mimeograph stencil) which must be incurred regardless of the number of copies that are made; and a running cost (for ink, paper, binding, and labor) which is proportionate to the size of the edition. Up to a certain point in edition size, more than half of the production cost of each copy is found in the item of first cost. After that point in edition size is passed, running costs exceed the first cost. The point in edition size at which first costs exactly equal running costs is specific for every process. In printing, at American price levels, it is in approximately an edition of 2000 copies; in planograph, 1000; in mimeograph, 400; and in hectograph, 77.
[T12] Consider, for instance, a book that can be set up in press ready to run for $500 (first cost). An additional cost of $125 will be incurred for paper, ink, and labor in running an edition of 500 copies. The production cost per copy in this edition of 500 is therefore $1.12. If the edition size is raised to 1000 copies, another $125 of running cost will be incurred, but the total production cost per copy will fall to $.75. In an edition of 2000, $500 of running cost will have been incurred (exactly matching the $500 of first cost), and the cost per copy of the product will have fallen to $.50. If the edition is increased beyond this efficiency point, production costs per copy will continue to fall, but more slowly. In an edition of 3000, the cost per copy will be $.42; in an edition of 4000, it would be $.37. Most of the economies that can be effected by the printing technique are reached at the 2000 edition mark. In planograph work, 1000 copies is the efficiency edition, and in mimeographing it is 400 copies. That is to say, if we had carefully itemized statements from printers, planographers, or mimeographers, analyzing the costs incurred in producing 2000 copies of a printed book, 1000 of a planographed book, or 400 copies of a mimeographed book, we ought to find that in each case half the cost was chargeable to operations and materials needed in running off the copies.
[T13] Whether we attempt to recoup production costs of texts by pro-rating them among recipients or by having the producers of texts assume these costs themselves, there is a technological advantage in carrying an edition if possible to its efficiency point, and in choosing for any enterprise of text distribution a process which will reach all desired recipients by operating at or near its efficiency point. It is technologically just as inappropriate to mimeograph as many as 2000 copies as it is to print only 400.
[T14] There is another series of processes based upon photography that is revolutionary in character because it opetates with efficiency points of one to five copies. These processes can be called non-edition processes because they permit practically the manufacture to order of copies of text as fast as demand for them appears. The processes are of two families, – the blueprint family and the micro-copying family. First let us consider blueprint.
[T15] A properly prepared typescript text, properly mounted in sheets of appropriate size, can be run through a blueprint machine (or one of the variants that yield a black-on-white copy), and new copies struck off at costs running from $.03 to $.06 per square foot. A 400-page octavo book, with 6 X 9 pages, presents 150 square feet of text. Such a text can be multiplied in unique copies made to order by one or another of the blueprint processes at costs from $4.50 to $9.00. A book by Elizabeth M. Richards on Alexander Vattemare and His System of International Exchanges has been issued experimentally in this way. This method is available not only for the multiplication of typescript made with black ribbon on thin paper, but also for paper negatives photostated from any text. An author’s typescript and an out-of-print book can both be brought into circulation by this method.
[T16] Micro-copying is, of all photographic techniques, the most elastic in its applications. It imposes upon the reader the burden of procuring for himself the reading apparatus, but it offers to readers thus equipped a practically unlimited range of utilities. Wherever there are installations of efficient micro-copying machines, unique copies of any text can be made to order and on demand at costs per 1000 words that are in the price range of normal book costs, or below it. Just as in printing the lowest unit costs are reached when a large number of copies of the same text is made, so in micro-copying lowest unit costs are reached when a long run of pages is copied uniformly and in sequence.
[T17] The different applications of the micro-copying technique vary among themseives as widely as does mimeographing from printing. The principal technical differences are those between the short run of a few pages and the long run of many thousand pages, and between the low reduction ratio of 10—12 diameters and the high reduction ratio of 18—20 diameters. The Bibliofilm Service, operated by the American Documentation Institute, furnishes a great many micro-copies of short scientific articles in reductions of 10—12 diameters. About forty American newspapers are currently reproduced on film for storage and preservation in a reduction of 18 diameters. It has become feasible to plan for the preservation on film of the billions of pages of newspapers, periodicals, books and manuscripts that bear their texts on perishable paper. It is also technically possible for libraries and depositories to heir collections regardless of the round out and complete their collections regardless of the accident of the market. More than this, it has become technically possible for any body of documentation to be made available anywhere in the world.
[T18] Libraries are beginning to plan cooperative projects in the field of microphotography. The financial terms upon which such cooperation is equitably to be effected have not as yet crystallized. In the early days of the railroad a vast amount of experiment in rate structures preceded the stabilization of railway rate practices. In the beginning of micro-copying services there must also be experiment, but some of the principles governing such experiments may even now be suggested.
[T19] There is a sense now in which all texts now organized in depositories may be regarded as being technologically equivalent to “books in print”. There is a sense in which the function of collecting materials can merge technologically with the function of “publishing” them, if by publishing we mean providing copies on demand. Collecting and “publishing” tend to merge also in another way, for micro-copying can be a means of making collections, bringing together copies of texts otherwise scattered among various depositories. We can, for instance, conceive of enterprises that will bring together, by means of film, documents scattered or inaccessible in China, or in Latin America.
[T20] In organizing and financing such projects there is a strong case for inter-library cooperation and sharing of expenses. The number of libraries whose cooperation is indicated for any such enterprise can be deduced from the principles governing size of edition that apply to printing and near-print techniques. For in micro-copying, the making of the negative is a true “first cost”, and the making of positives from the negative is a true “running cost”.
[T21] Let me illustrate: Suppose we were to plan an enterprise in which an expedition were to be sent to China or Latin America to collect on film ten million pages of text. A photographic expedition would have to be fitted out, and all the costs of travel and operations would become part of the first cost of the film. Let us say that the ten million pages are reproduced on 200,000 feet of film. The cost of film and processing in making each positive is a running cost. The running cost per copy might be about $10,000. If the cost of the expedition were estimated at $100,000, the number of cooperating libraries should be ten, each of which contribute a total of $20,000, half to the cost of making the positive which the library would then own. The participation of more than ten libraries in such a project would still reduce the cost to each of the finished positive films, but the savings would be less and less substantial as the number of participant subscribers increased beyond the efficiency point. If another ten libraries wish to utilize the film method in expanding their resources, they would do better to organize another enterprise operating in another field, and count on mutual loans to give the benefit of both projects to all.
[T22] At another extreme in the potential library use of microcopying is the making of micro-copies of books or periodical articles in lieu of loans. How shall library practice in this field be developed? Shall we make and hold a negative, and issue a positive to the individual user? That would mean setting up and administering a secondary library of short film strips, duplicating in a fragmentary way the library of books. There is probably a minimum number of pages, a minimum footage of film, at which it will be economical to make and hold a negative. This may be a unit of a hundred feet of film; it may be less, it may be more. The administrative cost of organizing a collection of short runs of pages will exceed the operating cost of re-copying for each user; for long runs of pages this relation will be reversed.
[T23] At this point another element of library policy appears: the preservation of material from the results of wear or chemical disintegration. Any material that is being worn out, whether in filming operations or by desk use, must either be withdrawn from use or filmed, so that film may be substituted for paper. Perhaps the user of materials that are perishing may be brought to contribute toward their preservation. Certainly it will tax our utmost administrative capacity to derive full benefit from these techniques in library service without charging ourselves with the expense of too much lost motion.
[T24] The individual scholar, no less than the library, has placed upon him not only new opportunities but new responsibilities. In the past, scholars have conceived of the book as the only proper unit in which the results of their labors can be communicated. Now they can plan to make available to their colleagues not only that portion of their product which is suitable for book production, but also the underlying materials and working papers. Just as the scholar will benefit by library policies keyed to the use of microphotography, so the library will benefit from new activities of scholars. The scholar who goes out on his own and gathers his material in film copy form will find the library a willing depository of his accumulation when he has finished his own use of it.
[T25] These techniques taken in their entirety are a challenge to scholars, librarians, and archivists. They invite scholars to think of their work not so much as the making of books but rather as the communicating of ideas. To librarians and archivists they present the issue of whether libraries and archive depositories are to be operated primarily as storehouses of property or power houses of cultural energy. All the traditions of four centuries of scholarship converge upon the book in print as a sacred symbol of thought. Much of the tradition of librarianship and archival practice is that of the collector and preserver of valued goods. But scholars now have many things to say to each other which they cannot say in books, because the technique and accountancy of printed book publication does not permit anything to be said unless it is to be said in the same words to 2000 people; and libraries, even the greatest of them, are overwhelmed by the geometrical increase in the quantity of the world’s documentation, so that none of them can, as collectors, hold for its readers more than a sampling of the record of civilization. The libraries have, through union cataloguing and lending policies, worked out methods of pooling their resources. Micro-copying can now greatly multiply their pooled efficiency. Certain sweeping changes in policy would seem, however, to be necessary if micro-copying is to pull its full potential weight. Hitherto libraries have loaned among themselves books and small items easily transported by mail; hereafter it will probably be more efficient to meet such demands by micro-copying small items in lieu of lending.
[T26] There are also the larger units in which micro-copying works at its highest efficiency, because it can be done at a high reduction ratio in long sequences of pages. I am thinking of such things as newspapers and periodical files, and of book collections of various kinds. I am thinking of the strategy of preservation calculated to meet not only the certainties of chemical disintegration where texts are borne on perishable paper, but the risks of destruction in war, fire, and flood. Certainly it will not be possible for all libraries and archives to preserve in film all their holdings, but it should be not only possible but quite practical for every depository to accept responsibility to civilization for some part of its holdings, dovetailing with the part that other libraries take responsibility for. Those holdings – let us begin with the perishable newspaper files – need be micro-copied only once, the negative stored in safety, and two positives made from it. One positive would then become available for lending, and thereby would be added not only to the permanent resources of the library itself but also through loan to the liquid resources of the world. If a number of libraries accepts this responsibility, each for some part of its holdings, and receives in exchange a borrower’s equity in the copies made by all other libraries, its own investment in the preservation of its own materials will return to it many fold in its own access to the corresponding micro-copied holdings of other centers. If a circle of twenty libraries should each organize, and each within its present budget shift a small percentage from the purchase of more texts on paper to the transfer of some of its unique holdings from paper to film and should agree to a mutuality of borrowing and lending, the resulting enrichment would be direct and immediate, and the long-term effect would reach beyond the field of librarianship.
[T27] All over the world we see barriers to intercourse rising – barriers to the movement of goods, obstacles to the movement of ideas. Here is a technique upon which we can base an institution that will work the other way, – toward a freer intercourse in the world community.
[T28] The legitimate equities of authors as fixed by copyright need not suffer. The proper reward due to the custodians for their acquisition and careful custody of their treasures must always be accorded them. But neither copyright nor ownership rights should be exploited piratically and to the detriment of full freedom of communication among mankind.
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The original memorandum has “unloose”, crossed out and replaced by “destroy”.↩︎