It’s cheap, compact, durable, and superior in many aspects to online and print publishing. In some circumstances it is the ultimate publishing medium. I’m talking about microfiche, of course. Microfiche are post-card size transparencies with print pages – up to 504 of them – demagnified on to it. They are then inserted into a microfiche reader, which magnifies the decreased image so it can be read. Many libraries have microfiche facilities, but they are becoming more and more disused and hence, many libraries would be happy to give their readers away. But now that you have this microfiche reader, where are you going to get the fiche? Who publishes libertarian literature on microfiche? There is one man: John Zube.
Zube has run Libertarian Microfiche Publishing (LMP) since 1978. Its output is huge, with over 500 000 print pages scanned onto microfiche. Each microfiche slide is available for only $1. It is called the PEACE PLANS series and there are nearly 2000 slides in it.
Authors he has published on microfiche include Austrian economists like Menger, Mises and Rothbard. But that is not all. There is Beckerath, Bourne, Childs, Mencken, Molinari, Say, Spencer, Sumner, Zube’s own writing, editions of The Individualist, The Libertarian Forum, LeFevre’s Journal, and other defunct publications. And then there is his excellent Slogans for Liberty collection, thematically sorted in alphabetical order, which numbers hundreds of print pages. It is difficult to sum up a 2000plus page catalogue, so I suggest readers browse the real thing. It is rare to find a catalogue that you actually enjoy reading, but this one is sure to astound and impress. It is also worth noting that Zube is a panarchist or exterritorialist, a philosophy sympathetic with the Rothbardian position. It is well worth a look.
