The Heavenly Machine from Hell

     One aspect of writing historical pieces that I enjoy most is the research. I love looking at old documents, especially when I can actually handle original letters, see the handwriting for myself and have a chance to see the spelling and vocabulary and sentence structure in its original context. And I love interviewing people and getting their first-hand accounts of long-ago events. I even love searching through reference books or spending time at the computer finding original material that has been digitized.
     But sometimes the quest for information requires looking at microfiche – an operation that is right up there alongside pulling your own teeth with pliers. Like its close cousin, microfilm, microfiche has been around for years. A microfiche is a 4 by 5 inch (10.2 by 15.2 cm) piece of photographic film, containing printed information in a size too small to be seen by the naked eye. Books, journals and magazines are often archived on microfiche.
     The major advantages of microfiche include storage in a small space, stability of the format – it’s rated to last 500 years – and no special knowledge needed to read it. As long as a microfiche machine is available to magnify the print to readable size, anyone who can read the language can read a microfiche.
     Ocean Park’s Timberland Library happens to have a state-of-the-art microfiche reader. For the last few days, I’ve been looking through early issues (1900-1901) of the now extinct South Bend Journal. My intent is to pick up back-story information for my current Chinook Observer series on the early-day Pacific County jail and its inmates. The material is plentiful but the gathering process is painful in the extreme.
     Spoiled as I am by the ability to search on words and phrases when using the computer, I find scanning microfiche maddeningly slow and torturous. Although the print size can be magnified to a legible size, the screen is too small to display a complete newspaper page, so it is necessary to adjust and readjust the view, hoping against hope that you haven’t missed anything crucial. What should be a pleasant few hours of Research and Rumination at the library becomes, for me anyway, an interminable exercise in frustration.
     Time to remind myself of some of those P resolutions for 2011 – perseverance, patience, perspective, potential…