This is the story of how one man in the publishing world saw libraries as potential purchasers of non-print resources. In the 1960s the author was first involved in the market for book-format reprints, but it was also a period of technological experimentation. Printing called for the sale of a minimum number of copies to cover initial costs. Emerging technologies could allow the production of a resource in smaller initial quantities, and even individual production on demand. With a view to gathering information concerning potential purchasers’ needs and ideas, he undertook a series of visits to major libraries and held discussions with various librarians mainly in the UK and USA. In the late 1960s he was working in the UK as a salesman for the Cornmarket Press, when Birmingham City Library (which housed the Shakespeare Collection) suggested reprinting low-cost out-of-print works. The result was the photographic reproduction of 500 bound copies of 79 works selling for £259. Other librarian-selected collections followed.
In 1973 he set up his own company, naming it Chadwyck-Healey, and began the venture by issuing in microfilm the correspondence archives of six UK publishers of well-known 19th century authors. Another venture was the microfilming of reports of committees of the British House of Commons, which he notes were purchased by all Australian libraries which were approached. Other microfilmed archives housed in Britain and the USA followed, such as The Diary of Beatrice Webb which was launched in 1978. Over the years other formats such as CD-ROM became available and were used to publish when the hardware became generally available in libraries. Eventually online publishing became yet another medium to exploit. Society, too, was changing and presenting opportunities for publication. The author notes the archives of the Russian Central Committee of the Communist Party, and the growing importance of Black Studies. Australia was an important market for its microform publications, but there was growing competition from American micropublishers. Eventually the company (which by then had well-established offices in the UK and the USA) was operating at a loss, and in 1999 it was sold to Bell & Howell (now ProQuest). The twenty years of the company were not only a publishing venture using emerging technologies, but a period when libraries were also experimenting and adopting them.
The scope of the book is set in a wider context than that of the company, and covers a wide range of topics such as ‘Official publications’, ‘Visual images on microfilm’, ‘The New York Times’, and ‘German Literature’. This is a personal story by an important creative figure in the publishing and library worlds internationally, making available such resources as the British Library catalogue, and Literature Online (LION). Based on personal memories it is an interesting, readable and well-indexed story pertinent to our own profession.