Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A film on which printed materials are photographed at greatly reduced size for ease of storage.
  • noun A reproduction on this kind of film.
  • transitive verb To reproduce (documents, for example) on microfilm.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun a photographic film with one or more very small images of printed or other graphic matter. Numerous images, corresponding to the contents of a book, newspaper, or journal, are typically produced on one long roll of film, and may be viewed for reading in a special apparatus called a microfilm reader.
  • transitive verb to photograph and produce images of on microfilm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A continuous roll of film containing photographs of documents at a greatly reduced size
  • verb To reproduce documents on such film

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb record on microfilm
  • noun film on which materials are photographed at greatly reduced size; useful for storage; a magnification system is used to read the material

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

micro- +‎ film

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Examples

  • And these libraries do not even do a thorough job of checking that the microfilm is clear and legible, so entire issues are lost and can never be recovered, because the originals have already been turned to pulp.

    2010 April 03 « The BookBanter Blog 2010

  • Often the microfilm is worn out and no effort is made to improve the situation.

    Digitizing Irish BMD « Cork Genealogist 2007

  • Common situations: Ten years ago, records of interest to genealogists were available primarily in microfilm format.

    Creating, Managing & Pres. Dig. Assets: The Doughboys and Camp Greene, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina 2006

  • Common situations: Ten years ago, records of interest to genealogists were available primarily in microfilm format.

    Archive 2006-04-01 2006

  • I'm buried in microfilm and old court records, and don't expect to emerge until after the conference.

    IsThatLegal? 2004

  • The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive.

    As We May Think 1969

  • The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive.

    As We May Think 1945

  • I came down here to the Boulder library and ordered microfilm from the National Archives.

    Shaking the Family Tree Buzzy Jackson 2010

  • I came down here to the Boulder library and ordered microfilm from the National Archives.

    Shaking the Family Tree Buzzy Jackson 2010

  • I tend to cringe and hold my tongue when I hear people say that digitization is bad for preservation because it makes people think we don't have to preserve the paper or microfilm, which is the only way to keep these cultural artifacts around for the long term.

    LoomWare 2009

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