Remember Microfilm Reader Printers?

This afternoon I assisted a civil engineering graduate student find some old references. We had to order 3 from interlibrary and found 2 from the print collection. However, 3 articles that he needed were in journals that the NJIT library has in micoform only. So, I go up to the machine similar to the one above and saw that both plugs were out. Yes, it has been months since I had to refer someone to the microfilm machine. I always dread it since every patron has to be shown how to use this dinosaur. It turned out that the machine was out of toner. I was told by circulation supervisor that toner was ordered over the summer and she would have to check with the administrative assistant to see if it had arrived.

We retrieved the reels with the articles needed by the student. We told him if the toner cartridge had arrived a student worker would make the copies for him. If not we would order the articles through interlibrary loan. Yes, there are even low tech problems in libraries.