With more and more records being available digitally, the National Archives at Kew announced on Friday that they will be disposing of batches of redundant microfilm by public lottery. The lottery opens tomorrow at 10:00 am British summer time and closes on Sunday, June 27 at 5:00 pm. The films must be requested in batches and are offered ‘as is’. They are not to be used for any commercial purpose, including digitisation or publication.
Batches include 205 reels of Operations Record Books for the South Africa Air Force (AIR 54/1-205) and 190 reels of Campaign Medal and Award Rolls from the War Office General Series (WO 100/1-554) among others. Download a complete listing from the News Announcement page on the National Archives website.
At the end of May, Dick Eastman posted an article entitled The Death of Microfilm and noted that many of the manufacturers of microfilm and microfiche equipment have already gone out of business and that maintaining existing equipment is soon going to be come prohibitively difficult and expensive.
Apparently The National Archives agree.
Image Credits: Alan Levine at flickr.com
