The preservation of paper-based artifacts is an essential issue for collection management in academic libraries. In recent years, the library science profession has often favored reformatting through microfilm or digitization, assuming too quickly that information matters, whereas an artifact's medium does not. However, much recent humanities…

This review of "Microform Librarianship" (a nontechnical guide) and "Computer-Output Microfilm: Its Library Applications" (a concise introduction to COM) points out that the vision of how the microform medium could be developed more imaginatively to better serve the user is missing from both books. (CWM)

A model based on storage and retrieval costs that determines efficient allocation of materials to different storage regimes in academic libraries is developed. An economically rational basis for determining role of several alternative storage methods which distinguish among materials by expected level of use is offered. Nineteen references are…