NOTES ON READING MACHINES FOR MICRO‐OPAQUES

Progress in the development of the use of micro‐opaques in Britain has been slow. One of the main reasons for this has been the lack of a satisfactory reading machine. Those libraries which obtained import licences for American models were few, and the reports on the quality of these models were of a nature to discourage would‐be purchasers. Neither the reader marketed by the Microcard Foundation nor that of the Readex Microprint Corporation seems to have met with the general approval of library users in Britain. In academic libraries, in particular, it has been felt that the advantage of possessing in compact form such material as the Microprint edition of the Three centuries of drama has been outweighed by the fact that members of the academic staff were unwilling to subject themselves to the strain of prolonged reading on these reading machines.