Think legal research
can be done exclusively online? Maybe
not quite yet. According to the Columbus
Dispatch, many Ohio local governments maintain records in paper
and … gasp … even on microfilm. With a life
expectancy of 500 years, microfilm excels at preserving material like meeting
records and ordinances.
Think the internet does a better job of saving information? As the New York Times reports, almost half of all links included in Supreme Court opinions no longer work.
Unless we can
eradicate problems like link rot (and maybe Google should tackle this problem
along with conquering death),
the dinosaurs of the information world, including microfilm, will persist.