A Comparison of the Production Costs of Different Physical Forms of Catalogue Output

The paper is based on a study carried out for the British Library. The 10 production methods compared (5 for printed and 5 for microform catalogues) are: 1. line printer on 3‐part stationery; 2. line printer to offset/litho master; 3. COM master to offset/litho; 4. graphic arts quality COM to offset/litho; 5. phototypesetting to offset/litho; 6. microfiche; 7. microfilm; 8. graphic arts quality microfiche; 9. graphic arts quality microfilm; 10. PCMI ultrafiche. Tables show the approximate costs of producing different numbers of copies of different sizes and with varying cumulation frequencies (ranging from weekly to annual). Over a wide range of catalogue size and number of copies, some form of microform output is usually cheapest.