EVIDENCE-STATUS OF MICROFILMED BUSINESS RECORDS

Many businesses today are turning to microfilm to record their essential papers in an effort to achieve ease and economy of operation through a reduction in storage requirements. Sixteen hundred pages of letter-press, transcripts or manuscripts can be reproduced on 100 feet of 35 mm. film to make a roll three inches in diameter. This is the equivalent of four thousand sheets of standard foolscap paper. Further illustrating the space savings is the fact that, on an average, the contents of 120 four-drawer file cabinets can be condensed into a single file cabinet and still leave some room for expansion. Moreover, the cost of microfilming is comparatively insignificant. For example, the Registrar\u27s Office at Temple University put over 300,000 records on microfilm at a cost less than the value of the filing cabinets released. With these advantages, and with the constantly increasing effectiveness of viewing devices, it may be asked what there is to stop a unanimous shift to microfilm. The answer to this question appears largely to be uncertainty among businessmen and their lawyers as to the evidentiary status of microfilmed records. It is the purpose of this comment to present a summary of the leading views on this subject in several jurisdictions in an effort to remove some of this uncertainty