Micromanagement

The institute I do my internship at has a large collection of microfilm. Specifically of declassified documents from different American governments of the past. Until I started working here I never used microfilm before, but I think it makes me look rather interesting.

To watch it, you need a big expensive machine into which you roll the tape, then you have to wait till the film is sucked up (sucking up most likely is not the specific term microfilmmachinemakers use, but then again microfilmmachinemakers probably isn't either) and then you can go through the documents frame by frame.

Granted, you don't quite get the historical thrill (us historians do actually get historical thrills when we get around old things..... we're pretty pathetic yeah.) as when you would hold the actual documents, but there is a certain charm in having to go through a big role of film, frame by frame, looking for stuff you can use in notes, which, by the way, nobody reads anyway.

The institute buys its microfilm and its books usually from sellers in the United States, they then deliver it to the Roosevelt Institute who then (when enough has come in) send it to the United States Embassy in the Hague so that no taxes have to be paid. The Embassy then lets my institute know they got some stuff and they then send a company to get it.

Microfilm is surprisingly expensive. For a collection of 24 reels (which means thousands of documents) and an index you pay several thousands of dollars (around 4.000 I believe). And, although compared to that amount it might seem peanuts, shipping costs still have to be added to that. It's also questionable how long the films will still be in use, since the internet as a way of getting sources is of course growing very fast.

Most recently, the institute however spend an insane amount of money on two new collections; one on Richard Nixon's foreign policy, another on Eleanor Roosevelt (FDR's wife)'s personal correspondence.

Do you know those movies where luggage gets mixed up, and a perfect innocent guy usually played by a Chevy Chase or Robin Williams kind of actor ends up with a suitcase with drugsmoney, while the gangster, usually played by unknown actors we never hear from again, ends up with dirty clothes?

Well, that happend to us. We got Dick, but the other box was filled with utterly worthless university leaflets. The nice woman at the embassy said the boxes probably got mixed up since the leaflets should have gone to an institute on career choice, and she thought they probably might have our 4.000 dollars worth of microfilm...

I kinda hope we get it back.