Over 20 years ago, the army was trying to introduce microfische instead of "hard copy" EMER's and AESP's. There is nothing better than having the manual in front of you when working on some piece of equipment. There were hand held viewers available to take out in the field, but they were rather pathetic. Copies could be printed off microfische, but not as good as hard copy manuals. Like Clive says, a lot of EMER's, etc. were issued in a photocopy form with rather vague photo illustrations, as he has found out.
The reason that they wanted to introduce microfische was that it made amending, a cheaper and more convenient method. Instead of sending out a pile of new pages to replace those being amended, a replacement fische would be produced and the preceding one would be destroyed. Sounds simple, but not practical at the sharp end.