I have used 16mm film for archival preservation filming extensively. Until re cently, it was difficult to view 35mm film on automatic readers (if not impossible), so 16mm seemed to be easier to deal with. I have found 16mm to be satisfactory, provided the reels are not the 215' ones preferred by many commercial vendors- the film is so thin that it breaks and gets tangled in the reader-printer mechanism. However, some older folks who have used the 16mm complain that the print is too small for them to read. Apparently 35mm has a lower reduction ratio, which is why it has generally been preferred. Denise Gluck