A central issue, that is, the original issue, in saving the originals of old
crumbling, disintegrating newspapers after microfilming is the value of the
illustrations.  The only "originals" of many important photographs are the
grainy, screened versions that were printed in the newspapers.  These
reproduce TERRIBLY from microfilm.  Granted that many of the photos, because
they are printed on brittle, crumbling, yellow paper are already lost, those
that may have survived should be preserved.  These crumbling newspapers just
need to be locked up and not handled until we have proper technology to deal
with them, like many of our archeological sites.  That was my original point.