Customer Reviews

Double Fold

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Baker raises some extremely interesting points in regards to libraries and the disposal of books and newspapers. This is an important and necessary read for anyone in the field of librarianship. I do think that there are some problems with this book however. Baker clearly began this book with an agenda--an admirable one in my view--but one that has prevented him from accurately portraying the story. He repeatedly refuses to acknowledge the very real and very pressing space problems that every library in America is now facing. Space is at a premium and libraries cannot continue unabated growth. Baker argues that it is cheaper to build storage facilities than to microfilm books and newspapers. Perhaps, but it is immeasurably cheaper to purchase a newspaper on microfilm than to build and maintain storage that is deperately needed for many other resources. Further, microforming and digitaization provide greater access to resources. I agree that discarding the original of microformed or digitized texts is bordering on criminal and idiotic, but libraries have realistically been left with no option. Money is scare and money is needed to hold on to thousands and thousands of volumes.

Baker delights in depicting librarians as nefarious ogres who delight in destroying books and newspapers in favor of microforms and digitization. This is an unfair and inaccurate depiction. Most librarians regret the destruction of books--for many, including myself, it can be a painful decision to discard a book--but unless governments and universities are willing to spend the money to store these items and maintain that storage area, there really is no practical alternative. Every librarian I know would prefer to have a hard copy of every book and newspaper they use, but this just is not possible. Baker's eloquent diatribe needs to be directed at governing bodies not at librarians. I think he will find that most librarians side with him in theory, but decades of practice and chronic underfunding demand librarians adopt a realistic, if depressing, approach. If he and his readers truly want to make a change and contribute to the role of libraries as preservers of paper, they would do well to pressure their local government to adeqately fund libraries. Until the funding and societal value of libraries increase, librarians will be forced to continue making heartbreaking choices as a result of limited financial resources.

Nicholson Baker's _Double Fold_ is an extended screed on the destruction of old books and newspapers by research libraries, and their inadequate replacement by microfilm and microfiche and digital copies. The book is not temperate in tone at all, which at times is a disadvantage. Baker at times advances his arguments unfairly. (For instance he complains in one case that a chemical used in a deacidification experiment was also used in bombs. So what? There are a number of other example of slippery rhetoric on his part.) Still, he makes his main points very well, and the story he has to tell is rather distressing.

Baker's interest in this subject was piqued when he learned that the British Library was selling off its extensive collection of old American newspapers. He found that for many newspapers no copies may exist but on microfilm, or at any rate that physical copies are harder and harder to find. The primary justification for this was that the papers, especially those printed since about 1870, were doomed to decay into unreadability, because of the low-quality, high-acid, wood pulp paper on which they are printed. (The secondary justification, somewhat more sensible perhaps, was simply a need for more space.) Baker found in particular that American libraries rarely have extensive runs of old papers anymore, opting instead for subscribing to microfilmed copies. Baker makes a good point that microfilm is simply not a good reproduction of the papers, particularly the color illustrations. He makes even better points that the process of reduction to microfilm has been rife with errors: skipped pages, pages photographed so poorly that they cannot be read, many missing issues. Furthermore, the tendency is for only one edition to be microfilmed and then shared among libraries, leading to what he calls the "Ace Comb Effect". If you have only one comb, copied many times, you will be missing the same teeth on each copy. If you have several combs, you may be missing teeth on each copy, but between them all, you will probably have all the teeth. Moreover, in the case of newspapers, there were multiple editions printed each day, sometimes quite radically different, particularly those published as out-of-town editions.

Baker further documents that a similar process is going on with old books. Book paper is generally higher quality than newsprint, so there is perhaps less of an impetus for conversion to microfilm, but the storage pressures are similar, and there is still a scare industry suggesting that old books are "crumbling to dust". And the same problems exist with microfilm, including besides those mentioned above the unergonomic quality of the reading process, the likelihood that microfilm itself will be as temporary if not more so than paper, and the generally destructive nature of the microfilming process.

The book points out that the research documenting the decay of old books and newspapers has been very poorly conducted. In fact, old paper isn't "crumbling to dust", and it is much less likely even to be approaching unreadability than has been reported. Some of the scare tactics Baker documents being used by the pro-Microfilm forces are disgusting.

It's an interesting, passionately argued, book. If at times I feel the passion and sarcasm of Baker's presentation undermines his purpose, for the most part, as far as I can evaluate, his points are well made. Microfilm is basically a disaster, at best a short term supplement to physical copies. Digitization is better by far, but should not be done destructively, and should, again, be a supplement and not a replacement for physical copies. Certainly this book is an eye-opening report.

This work is not news reporting. This is one intelligent and passionate person's account of his suprise, shock, and disgust at the manner in which historically important documents of popular American history have been mismanaged over time. Decisions on the destruction of newspapers (and more recently of older books and journals, as Nicholson points out) were made on broad statements of supposed fact, rather than a professional study of the material under question. He maintains librarians could have and can maintain their collections better. As a librarian, I know this to be true, and I agree with Mr. Baker.

This is not a perfect book. Nicholson Baker is aggressive and engages in hyperbole. He can be one-sided. However, he does not hate libraries, or librarians, but he has a major bone to pick. His suggestions of consiracy are a bit stretched, but his evidence that similar poor solutions were widespread and fed one on another is accurate. His focus on newspapers may make them sound more imporant to historical research then perhaps is true, but in some branches of study access to the complete sets of originals is indeed crucial. And he is right in most instances as to the failure of the system, even if he does not show constraints libraries are under. I, however, personally believe the book would have been less strong had he done so.

Baker advocates we keep as much as we can - far more than we do now. However, every library cannot keep all it has and will receive. Deterioration of material does happen, material is stolen or damaged, and more money for a new library storage facility is difficult if not impossible to secure in these times. He points out that, even with current budgets, libraries have not done enough - that they have not kept even one copy of many important historical materials because of short sighted, ill-advised decisions - and he is right, and his evidence is damning. Library and historical associations have frequently supported the idea that availability of the original artifact in scholarly research is more important than ever, yet Baker shows evidence time and again where only the content - often incompletely and incoherently copied - was judged useful. Cooperative storage solutions, as at Duke University, and better efforts at balancing preservation of the original and long term, widespread access to content, as at the University of Virginia, need to be pursued.

Baker may have made some librarians angry, but I believe he has also cut a path to finding more creative solutions to a 50 year old problem, whose repercussions last much longer.

I was afraid this book was going to be rather dry and brittle, being about old paper and all, but I gave it a chance because I like Nicholson Baker's writing so much, and know from experience he can write about anything--and does--and make it fascinating. But I defy you to read this book "just" for Baker's writing, as I did, and not get involved in this subject. I won't go on about it here--just to say that the previous reviewer from Washington D.C. misses the point when he accuses Baker of saying microfilm is a bad thing. That's simply not true--he says it's fine, anything that makes papers more accessible to more readers is fine--just don't destroy the originals! But the way Baker tells this story, from the early days of American newsprint (using cloth made from unwrapped Egyptian mummies!) to the quirky bow-tie wearing librarians in the Library of Congress--it's as unpredictable and intelligently told as his novels. Leave it to N. Baker to write about old newsprint and make it interesting! I really recommend this book--and I was a skeptic!

I don't wish to impugn the profession, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the previous review was written by a defensive librarian. (And in Washington DC... why, whichever library could that be?) The mistake they - and, as Baker is arguing - and many other librarians are making is to see newspapers and microfilm as a simplistic either/or choice. (Wrecking books to speed the process of microfilming them can rather force that choice...) Baker is hard on the faults of microfilm in this book, yes, but as a corrective to the uncritical acceptance that it has too long enjoyed. Microfilm IS very useful, but it is not a complete substitute for the original. BOTH should be used, or at least retained.

Look at most press coverage of this issue, and in Baker's book, and you'll find that the people defending microfilm, and paper culls, are librarians or those in the information industry. NOT scholars or readers. I defy you to find a scholar who has not found themselves thwarted at some point by crummy and unreadable microfilm for which there was no paper backup. And as for acidification: I use old books and periodicals all the time, and sometimes they do crack or shed little chips of paper. But most are still usable, and will remain so for many years - especially those which are rarely used, which is often the case with older material. So why the rush to get rid of them?

Does Baker engage in some hyperbole in this book? Yeah, probably. Is he wrong to? I'm not so sure. The destruction he is describing, and the rate at which it is happening, requires a very loud wake-up call. If you're buying this expecting a Baker novel, I guess you will disappointed. But if you love books like his "The Size of Thoughts," or if you are simply someone who truly cares about old books and writing - and yes, I include most librarians in that group - then you really need to read this.

I worked at the San Francisco Public Library for eight years (1985 to 1992), and I can cheerfully report that librarians are as subject to human frailties as the rest of us. Professional arrogance and jealous guarding of position at the expense of purpose are not universal, but nor are they unheard of. If librarians are any less susceptible, as a class, to the lemming enthusiasms that beset lesser mortals, no one told my colleagues about it.

When I read this book, what outraged me was not that every library in the country didn't keep every copy of every newspaper it ever received. What outraged me was that virtually no library-not even the Library of Congress-kept complete runs of the most important newspapers of the 19th and 20th centuries. This seems to me an inexcusable refusal of a professional obligation. If the Library of Congress cannot or will not keep at least ONE intact set of these important primary records, it fails in the most basic task it has been set. If a master's degree in library science allows a person to feel otherwise, then possessing one should automatically disqualify people from being hired as librarians.

Librarians are civil servants, a designation which implies some responsibility to the public and to posterity. To believe that what concerns us today, as a society, is what will concern societies of tomorrow-and that the librarian's job thus requires judicious winnowing of primary materials that "don't circulate"-is a bureaucratic vulgarism based on a fantastic failure of the imagination.

As a lover of "artifacts," Nicholson Baker argues that the newspapers that were thrown out and replaced with the sporadic, distorted fossil record that is microfilm should have been saved; this seems to be what irritates librarians most about his book. However, he argues more persuasively that one complete run should have been saved somewhere, if only to await a technology that could reproduce their colors and images properly. It's hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with this. Unfortunately, a premature enthusiam for microfilming and discarding newspapers made this impossible.

Is this book shrill and emotionally overwrought? If its claims are true, it has every right to be.

Well then: were original newspapers destroyed after being microfilmed? Yes. Does the microfilm record contain considerable gaps? Yes. Does it preserve the outstanding graphic work of the important American artists and photographers who worked for the dailies in the early 20th century? No. Is it thus a usuable resource for students of printing, photography, graphic design, or cartoon art? No. Are some pages unreadable because the edges have been cut off by sloppy technicians? Yes. Did some microfilm deteriorate more rapidly, and with greater loss of legibility, than the original newspaper would have? Yes. Vartan Gregorian claimed that seventy percent of the books printed after 1850 would deteriorate so badly as to be unusable by the year 2000-is this figure correct? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

None of this is simply my opinion, or Mr. Baker's. These are facts that can be verified by going into any library in America. The inference seems clear.

At the SFPL, certain departments were famous for being thoroughly self-referential and hermetic; concerns about public service were not allowed to interfere with scheming, empire-building, and tireless jockeying for position. Even so, when Ken Dowlin took over the library, and we were all invited to hear his inaugural address, many librarians were visibly upset to hear him say that he wanted to get replace books with electronic files (although they seemed far more shocked by his admission that he kept a Bible by his bed). Despite these grumblings, Dowlin's regime sent to the landfill books of such staggering value that they could have provided at least a year's operating budget for one or two of the smaller branches (certain of which were only open one or two days a week due to financial constraints).

All of this is a matter of public record; if the professionals to whom we've entrusted our libraries cannot see the wastefulness and illogic of their actions, I would suggest that their minds are clouded by considerations that are inimical to their responsibilities as public servants.

Baker's book is about the destruction of library materials in the process of their "preservation". He believes that valuable newspapers and books have disappeared, once they were unbound, in library "preservation" projects.

The worst part, Baker has decided, is that the projects were unnecessary: "preserved" microfilms and fiches are hard to use and even unreadable now, and acid paper and other format deterioration emergencies were false alarms, he says. And, most dramatically of all, it was the caretakers -- librarians, in the US and at the British Library -- who carried out the destruction, Baker believes.

Along his meandering way towards this basic thesis, Baker takes slices at a large number of side issues -- everything from the faulty chemistry of "bath" solutions for acid paper problems, to supposed OSS and CIA roles in fostering early "preservation" experiments, to several hilarious "bios" of some of the more colorful people who have been involved in preservation. Baker is a noted fiction writer -- his prose does make fun reading, if you enjoy gossip or scandal or expose' as a genre, or even if you just enjoy language:

"A sincere - sounding reference woman in the microforms department said, 'Oh we would never have hard copies going back that far -- they just don't keep.' They don't keep, kiddo, if you don't keep them..."

"So I made calls, hired lawyers, wrote letters, formed a non - profit corporation, and appealed to the British Library's sense of decency. It didn't work..."

"...bibliectomies..."

Entire chapters of Baker's book are wonderful on their own, from this strictly - prose point of view: Chapter 6 "Virgin Mummies", about Keystone Cop projects to harvest cotton rag for paper - making from the wrappings on acres of ancient mummies apparently still existing, unharvested, in Egypt; or Chapter 11 "Thugs and Pansies", about the distinction between preservationists in libraries who destroy old books, and conservators who won't.

So whoever decides to take on Baker on behalf of librarians and preservation-- not to speak of Robert Darnton and other luminaries who now are lining up somewhat on Baker's side -- had better know how to write.

And Baker names names -- does he name names -- many of the major people in librarianship of the last half century make his list, so that to be included may become a point of pride ("S/he was on Baker's List!"): Clapp, Avram, Licklider, Boorstin, Kenney, and above all Patricia Battin... By the time Baker is through, if the library profession gets at all weak - in - the - knees about this there won't be any leading librarian left who will be willing to take on a preservation project.

But:

1) Was / is there a crisis? -- lack of library shelf space and therefore the need to "weed" collections, or of "acid paper" and other media deterioration? Baker himself never offers smaller numbers than the librarians did. There must have been _some_ "bad" books and newspaper volumes, among all those giant collections. So if not as many as the librarians tabulated, so meticulously if erroneously, then how many? Surely not none?

2) Was / is an "acid paper" book really usable / readable? Again, Baker is counter - intuitive: he offers "common sense" reassurances, based on his personal pageturning of supposedly - deteriorated items sitting usefully on his shelves at home. But I have Penguins from the 1960s on _my_ shelves at home, too: mine smell, terribly, are so brown that they can't be read, and they crack and fall apart as I turn their pages. And I have found same / similar on library shelves. So there is "common sense" experience available to contradict Baker's own: if he really is going to counter library statistics he needs his own deterioration numbers -- something better than bald reassurance that "nothing out there in libraries is in bad shape, really".

That's the main trouble with Baker's book: its entertaining criticism falls short on real analysis. The book's evidence is anecdotal -- "well - written bullying" has been suggested as its best description. Baker himself sees his book as an impassioned plea for conserving old newspapers and retaining original library materials. He does, sort of, see the "Hobson's choice" problem he is in: he wonders,

"Why not both? Why can't we have the benefits of the new and extravagantly expensive digital copy _and_ keep the convenience and beauty and historical testimony of the original books resting on the shelves...?"

-- money, Mr. Baker -- "any time someone tells you 'it's not the money, it's the principle of the thing', it's the money..."

Others now will use Baker's harsh indictment of the library community to derail current preservation efforts altogether. Baker's book is reaching a wide public, just as his New Yorker articles roasting the San Francisco Public Library did -- librarian Laura Bush will read this book, at the White House -- Darnton has suggested publicly that she should, and she probably has received plenty of copies already.

Baker's timing is bad. He offers criticisms and accusations at a time of severe library service cutbacks. If Baker's ridicule discourages even the few current preservation efforts, then, what if _he_ is wrong about "the problem"? What if the librarians are right, and there really _are_ massive and growing bodies of documents imperilled by acid paper and other depredations?

If library preservation efforts now slow or halt it will be on Baker's head, and on the heads of those who cave in to his pressures. Better analysis and better solutions are needed -- namecalling and divisiveness don't help. If Baker doesn't like the endangered books numbers which the librarians have come up with then let him come up with his own: "first do no harm" works only if you don't let the patient die while you are waiting for the perfect cure. We need more_ "conservation *and* preservation *and* access" for libraries -- in combination, perhaps, but _more_ -- not less....

Nicholson Baker's Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper is a fiery polemic dedicated to the task of protecting what he sees as one of our nation's most important resources: our libraries' massive stockpile of seldom-used older books and newspapers. As Baker explains, the extent of our paper reserves of old newspapers and rarely read old books is dwindling, often being chopped up and "preserved" (that is, their content, rather than their form, is preserved) in either microform or a digital format.

Baker's position is not a nuanced one; we need to save everything. To do this, libraries need to purchase warehouses, warehouses basically without end, so that not a Sun-Times or musty tome is thrown aside. The very first sentence in the summary on the back cover reads "The ostensible purpose of a library is to preserve the printed word" which shows Baker may have a basic confusion between the definition of a library and the definition of a repository, but never mind: the point is, Baker says, a library neglects its duties when it throws away disused materials.

Baker's writing style is eloquent and engaging; however, the entire book is dominated by a one-sided and hostile tone, along with his distinctly uncharitable characterization of his opponents.

I think the basic philosophical difficulty in Baker's position can be found in the chapter with the title "A Swifter Conflagration." Here, Baker fully reveals his philosophical position that all pieces of written media are valuable as individual objects. It is not merely enough that a rarely-used book's contents are preserved somewhere; merely disposing of a particular object is itself always a dereliction of duty.

Baker says:

"The truth is that all books are physical artifacts, without exception, just as all books are bowls of ideas [i.e. textual content]. They are things and utterances both. And libraries, [Baker's ally] believes, since they own, whether they like it or not, collections of physical artifacts, must aspire to the conditions of museums. All their books are treasures, in a sense..."

This is a rather overstated thesis. Some books and newspapers are valuable essentially for their own sake, rare books such as the Gutenberg Bibles, for example. However, it doesn't follow that every library must preserve every non-duplicate book or newspaper on its shelves, some of which, such as pulp novels, are almost certainly disposable once their shelf-life is over. What Baker calls for is for libraries to devote large portions of their physical holdings to items that, not virtually, but literally, do not circulate.

Clearly, there are some documents for which preserving the content, as opposed to the object, is enough. Sometimes a microform copy may be enough. But in any case, a non-print version of some kind will be enough for a large number of items, such as research and journal articles is certainly enough.

There are times in Double Fold when Baker seems to be using the sheer confidence of his vituperation to slip some questionable logic past the reader. At one point Baker complains that the Library of Congress threw out ten million dollars worth of public property. However, his criterion for this figure is replacement value. This is a somewhat meaningless, almost sneaky figure. A lot of otherwise worthless things might be rather pricey to replace. Being difficult to replace does not make something valuable in the first place.

This is not say there are not some worthwhile themes in Double Fold. Baker's complaints about microform are well taken, his call for a national repository even more so. While I may disagree that individual libraries are responsible for every physical document they've ever possessed, it would be nice for historians if they could expect to find them somewhere.

Baker also provides the reader with an entertaining and occasionally fascinating history of book "preservation," including the disastrous use of large, book-filled, black-goo spurting tanks of explosive gas, formerly owned by NASA. Another memorable anecdote involves the creation of paper from the wrappings of Egyptians mummies.

The fact that Baker's book is quite biased and sometimes infuriating should not dissuade an intelligent reader from giving it a shot; however, some practical knowledge of libraries and a questioning attitude are prescribed.

When I think about writers, Nicholson Baker is one who is difficult for me to categorize. I enjoy his novels quite a lot (such as Vox and Fermata). They are unique and clever which is something I really appreciate; however, I'm not sure I read them because I really like the stories. Instead, I read them because Baker is a writer whose talent jumps out at me from the page. His writing is beautifully constructed and his passion about his ideas and characters is clear in his dynamic style. Whether or not you like his stories or his thoughts is secondary--he makes you feel something when you read him. I love the jolt of energy I get and I love the way my mind churns when I read something of Baker's.

I certainly got a jolt of energy from Double Fold. In it, Baker describes the destruction of the physical content of many of our nation's libraries in an effort to conserve space. Volumes of old newspapers and countless "brittle" books have had their contents transferred to microfilm. Supporters of this process claim this is necessary to save the intellectual content of paper products that are literally crumbling away. Baker argues, however, that, in most cases, this imminent loss of old books and newspapers is hype. Paper products such as books and newspapers have a longer life than is usually assumed and the "tests" of their strength (such as the test that gives this book its title) are often arbitrary and poorly designed.

Baker also points out the loss of quality that often accompanies the transfer to microfilm. If the effort truly is to save intellectual content, then that effort is often a failure. Many volumes of newsprint that was to be transferred to microfilm never made it and many volumes more are so poorly filmed as to be illegible. Additionally, as the film ages, the quality is reduced even more rapidly than an equivalent aging in the original paper. Many films that were once readable are quickly becoming garbage. With no originals from which to replace the film.

Here is where Baker's argument really struck home with me. When these "delicate" paper products are reduced to film, the original books and newspapers are destroyed. Not only are they sliced and diced during filming to make that process easier, the remains are thrown out. I never dreamed that when I sat at my hometown public library and scanned through old issues of the Quincy Herald-Whig and its predecessors on microfilm, that, somewhere, the old, physical, paper issues weren't still around. Maybe Quincy is lucky and someone has saved the old volumes somewhere but it seems unlikely. In my mind, that is a sad loss.

I guess this is why this particular book of Baker's moved me more than anything else he's written so far. In this particular passion, I am on Baker's side. I love books and newspapers. Not just their intellectual content but the objects themselves. I live in an apartment surrounded by thousands of books and newspapers, many of which are very old and in great shape. And, you know what? If I could get them all magically transferred to microfilm or CDROM and be guaranteed that all of their intellectual content could be saved, I wouldn't do it. There is a quality to the object itself that has value and is worth saving. I am a book collector.

While I was reading this book a friend of mine saw me and asked what the book is about. When I told her she said, "A whole book about that?" Yes. If you have any interest in books, newspapers or libraries, I suggest strongly that you read this book. It is well-written, passionate and, though there is no question where Baker's sympathies lie, he presents both sides of the story. You will learn a lot and, if you are anything like me, wish you had Baker's passion and resources to start a non-for-profit company and buy up some of these things to save them from destruction. It is a worthy passion.

As a longtime newspaper researcher, I was already well aware of the problems of converting library materials to microfilm, but this book lays out the whole story in horrifying detail. If you care about history, the value of a complete and unadulterated historical record, or even just the intrinsic value of the materials being destroyed, this book will make you very angry. We trusted our country's record of history to the libraries and they casually threw most of it into the nearest convenient trashcan.

Baker's indictment reveals the extent of the loss, the foolish assumptions that led to it, and the military (!) bureaucrats who led the campaign. It is a terribly sad story but one that must be told and learned from if we are to avoid further losses. If you know a librarian, buy them a copy of the book, too (I can't imagine many libraries will put this book on the shelves!).

My only quibble with the book, and it's a small one, is that Baker has missed two important points:

1 - the microfilm companies are holding our nation's history hostage; by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for a run of one newspaper on microfilm they are effectively keeping it out of the hands of libraries and, thus, researchers. If one of the reasons for the mass switch to microfilm was to cut costs, why didn't the libraries dictate terms to the microfilm companies when they started cutting up those precious bound volumes? Many libraries can't even afford to stock the microfilm of their hometown papers!

2 - because microfilm is so expensive, the stated problem of accessibility was not solved. One reason to photograph everything was so that researchers could have improved access to materials. In fact, the opposite has happened. Few libraries own microfilm, and those that do are unwilling to do inter-library loans. Thus, the researcher has to travel to the libraries to do their research or hire local researchers (a cottage industry these days).

No matter - Baker's passionate indictment hits plenty of high points; more than enough to convert most anyone (except perhaps the librarians who were duped for so long that they can't conceive of changing their positions).

I also salute Nicholson Baker for putting his money where his mouth is. His purchase of a good portion of the British Library's American newspaper archives (yes, even in 2000 the libraries are still gleefully disposing of paper) is excellent news. I only wish I'd known about the sale at the time - I would have gladly participated. However, the libraries know darn well that their actions are a public relations nightmare, so they keep these mass disposals very quiet.

Buy this book! Loan it to friends! Get the word out!