Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Hardcover)

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.

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 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.