Eugene Barnum Power

Eugene Power

Eugene Power (1905-1993) was a US pioneer of microfilm.

Eugene Barnum Power was born June 4, 1905 in Traverse City, Michigan. He became famous for his entrepreneurial role in the development of microfilm publishing and as the founder and leader of University Microfilms, Inc. He died November 6, 1993.

Career

Eugene Power received BA and MBA degrees from the University of Michigan. In 1930 he joined Edwards Brothers,Inc., a printing and publishing firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and became Vice-President. In 1931 he went to England to photograph early printed books. In 1935 he planned to re-publish on microfilm the 26,000 titles in the Short title catalogue of books published in England, Scotland & Ireland... 1475-1964. He was influenced by Robert C. Binkley to become more expert.

Edwards Brothers preferred to remain with conventional printing, so Power to concentrate on microfilms in 1938 and founded University Microfilms Inc.. He then undertook numerous ambitious microfilming projects and sold sold positive film copies to libraries wishing to have access to rare, often unique, books. With the ability to generate print copies on paper the company helped to make out-of-print books available.

Between 1939 and 1945, Power advised a Rockefeller funded project to microfilm important British manuscripts at Oxford and Cambridge. Working from London, he set in motion a project that photographed countless manuscripts in British collections, saving them from destruction in the Blitz. Power was asked by the Office of the US Coordinator of Information to help film newspapers, books, periodicals, and other documents acquired by Allied agents in occupied Europe so that they could be shipped to the US for intelligence analysis. He became a microfilm expert with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

In May 1942, Power brought all of the different Allied agencies interested in obtaining enemy publications together and established the Executive Committee of the Aslib Microfilm Service (AMS). AMS was core of what Frederick Kilgour later developed as the OSS's microfilm supply of strategic German scientific publications.

In 1951 University Microfilms Inc. became the publisher of record for all U.S. dissertations.

Poweer helped develop a Xerox copier that worked directly from microfilm negatives and printed in a continuous flow. In 1962 University Microfilms Inc. was acquired by the Xerox Corporation. Power continued to work for Xerox until his mandatory retirement in 1970 at the age of 65. University Microfilms Inc. later became Proquest.

Eugene Power was involved in the founding in 1937 and later development of the American Documentation Institute, which was renamed American Society for Information Science, later Association for Information Science and Technology.

Eugene Power and Vernon Dale Tate were actively involved in founding the National Microfilm Association (NMA) in 1944, with Power serving as the first Vice President. They sustained NMA until it was revitalized in 1952 with Power as President. NMA became the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM).

Publications

• "The Manuscript Copying Program in England." American archivist, 7, no 1 (1944): 28-32. [1]
• Edition of one : the autobiography of Eugene B. Power, founder of University Microfilms. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1990. Appendix D, pp 391-399, reprints his "Microfilm as a substitute for binding."

Honors

Power was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in 1977 for services to preservation.

Further reading

• Cooke, George W. "Eugene B. Power: Father of preservation microfilming." Conservation administration news 54 (July 1993): 6, 7, 28 & 29. Concise, detailed biography.
• Power, Eugene. Edition of one : the autobiography of Eugene B. Power, founder of University Microfilms. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1990.
• Power, Philip H. "Eugene Barnum Power (4 June 1905-6 December 1993)." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139, No. 3 (Sep., 1995): 300-304. Obituary. [2]
• "Eugene Power." Wikipedia [3]
• Meckler, Alan M. Micropublishing: A history of scholarly micropublishing in America, 1938-1980. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.
• Farkas-Conn, Irene. From documentation to information science: The beginnings and early development of the American Documentation Institute—American Society for Information Science. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. [4]
• Sillanpaa, Marko. "Early History of the National Microfilm Association (AIIM)." AIIM Open Forum 2016 [5]

Papers

University of Michigan. Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor. Eugene Power papers, 1937-1993. 145 linear feet & 1 vol. Finding aid [6].