Yes, they got photocopies of what was on the microfilms in Hawaii libraries and at the Library of Congress.
But the microfilm rolls themselves had very suspicious anomalies suggesting that those microfilms had been tampered with and/or replaced. The condition of the films was not what would come from a professional microfilming service such as created the microfilms for these newspapers, and the wear on the microfilms was not consistent with their age or the set-up where they were used. And there were things like scratches disappearing over time - which would indicate that scratched microfilms had later been replaced by more pristine ones.
Even my normal good sense of humour is deserting me, last question:
Did the scratched and the non-scratched materials contain the same information?
Nothing like going over the same ground five years later...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/are_obamas_1961_newspaper_birth_announcements_fake.html
At about the same time as Starfelt’s July 2008 posting, a blogger named “Infidel Granny” posted the same birth announcement image on an AtlasShrugs blog. Infidel Granny claimed to have received her copy in an e-mail from the same nameless research librarian who helped Starfelt from the Hawaii State Library. Infidel Granny briefly resurfaced in 2009 in an AtlasShrugs blog, where she opined, “I sure hope you don’t think I had anything to do with a forgery.”
The origin of the second birth announcement is even more murky. The best evidence (hat tip: Butterdezillion) is that sometime around August 13, 2008, a Honolulu resident named “Koa” posted the August 14, 1961 Honolulu Star-Bulletin birth announcement on TexasDarlin apparently after she found it herself in the Hawaii State Library. The first twenty-five births in the August 14 Honolulu Star-Bulletin announcements match exactly in the same order as the twenty-five births from the August 13 Advertiser.
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So we are back to a Swedish student creating a full page graphic in 2008, on which the we find the birth announcements...with the possible deception being that Virginia’s name was removed and replaced.