Nicholson Baker - Double Fold - Libraries and the Assault on Paper

11. Wilson: William K. Wilson and E. J. Parks, “Comparison of Accelerated Aging of Book Papers in 1937 with 36 Years Natural Aging,” Restaurator 4 (1980): “Unfortunately the papers were accidentally discarded several years ago.” Elsewhere, Wilson and Parks write: “Very few organizations can maintain a project [such as testing naturally aging paper] that spans 25–50 years, especially when there is no pot of real gold at the end of the trail.” “Historical Survey of Research at the National Bureau of Standards on Materials for Archival Records,” Restaurator 5 (1983). In 1998, the American Society for Testing and Materials announced a one-hundred-year natural-aging experiment; books containing fifteen different kinds of test paper have gone into ten libraries in North America. The object is to develop an accelerated-aging test that better correlates with natural aging.

12. now viewed with skepticism: In Artificial Aging as a Predictor of Paper’s Future Useful Life, an Abbey Newsletter Monograph Supplement, Helmut Bansa and Hans-H. Hofer find that “there may be at best an accidental agreement between the results of artificial aging at high temperatures and natural aging” (Provo, Utah: Abbey Newsletter, 1989). See also Wilson and Parks, “Comparison of Accelerated Aging,” in which the data suggest that “either the number of samples is less than adequate to provide a valid statistical population or the accelerated aging method used in 1937 does not fully simulate natural aging, or both.” Later (p. 47) Wilson writes: “Don’t try to predict permanence in years.” E. Ströfer-Hua, after an experiment that demonstrated the flaws of oven aging, concludes: “History can only happen; it cannot be simulated in advance.” E. Ströfer-Hua, “Experimental Measurement: Interpreting Extrapolation and Prediction by Accelerated Aging,” Restaurator 11 (1990).

13. “an interesting academic exercise”: American Society for Testing and Materials, “Standard Test Method for Determination of Effect of Moist Heat (50 % Relative Humidity and 90 °C) on Properties of Paper and Board,” Annual Book of ASTM Standards, 1998, vol. 15.09, D 4714, Appendix (Conshohocken, Pa.: American Society for Testing and Materials, 1998).

14. “naive hope”: Tom Lindstrom, “Discussion Contribution: Slow Fires — It’s Paper Chemistry, Physics, and Biology,” in Paper Preservation: Current Issues and Recent Developments, ed. Philip Luner (Atlanta: Tappi, 1988). Glen G. Gray writes: “Although several accelerated-aging procedures or chemical specifications have been proposed, carefully controlled experiments and many years of natural aging would be required to verify predictions.” Glen G. Gray, “Determination and Significance of Activation Energy in Permanence Tests,” in Preservation of Paper and Textiles of Historic and Artistic Value, ed. John C. Williams (Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1977). Wilson and Parks write: “An accelerated aging test does not tell what a paper will be like after 25 or 50 years of storage. It only provides information concerning the ranking of different samples with respect to storage properties.” William K. Wilson and E. J. Parks, “An Analysis of the Aging of Paper,” Restaurator 3 (1979): 56.

15. newspaper library’s newsletter: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers,” Newspaper Library News 22 (winter 1996–1997).

16. wire-service story: Associated Press, “British Library Giving Away Old Newspapers,” January 29, 1997, Nexis.

17. library selected for discard: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers (Continued),” Newspaper Library News 24 (winter 1997–1998).

18. “overseas disposals project”: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers: Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the USA,” Newspaper Library News 25 (winter 1998–1999).

19. “Increasing pressure”: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers.”

20. “Material for which we cannot”: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers.”

CHAPTER 2 — Original Keepsakes

1. micro-madman: Herman H. Fussler’s early how-to book is Photographic Reproduction for Libraries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). Research libraries have been “duly grateful for the space saved through newspaper-salvaging operations,” he writes, in “Photographic Reproduction of Research Materials,” Library Trends, April 1954, reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing, p. 26. Fussler’s work at the Chicago branch of the Manhattan Project is briefly discussed in Burton W. Adkinson, Two Centuries of Federal Information (Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson, and Ross, 1978), pp. 42–43. See also Fussler’s obituary in the Chicago Tribune, March 7, 1997.

2. Shawn Godwin: Letter to author, July 30, 2000; Godwin would prefer that I not name the institution. Some years later, Godwin took a historical-research job in which he was supposed to make a catalog of the murals painted by two Hungarian-American artists. “Many of their murals had long been destroyed and the only documentary evidence, especially the only color evidence for them existed in a vertical file of real newspaper articles maintained by a major library. When the library moved into a new, much larger facility the vertical files were microfilmed in black and white and the originals destroyed according to apparently standard archival procedure. Fortunately on pain of death the reference librarian had previously allowed me to take the articles outside the building to a local copy shop to make color copies (the hoops I had to jump through to do this were in retrospect ironic given that the material was slated to be destroyed).”

3. U.S. Newspaper Program: See Robert P. Holley, “The Preservation Microfilming Aspects of the United States Newspaper Program: A Preliminary Study,” Microform Review 19:3 (summer 1990); and Larry E. Sullivan, “United States Newspaper Program: Progress and Prospects,” Microform Review 15:3 (summer 1986); Nancy E. Gwinn, “The Rise and Fall of Cooperative Projects,” Library Resources and Technical Services 29:1 (January/March 1985).

4. “part of the City’s own heritage”: Charles Longley, “Newspapers at the Boston Public Library,” t.s., March 13, 1998, p. 3. “The paper collection should not be discarded,” Longley writes, since “for many titles the Library has the only remaining original paper copy. As artifacts the original files provide a direct physical link with the past and are of interest as such.”

5. “original keepsake newspaper”: Hammacher Schlemmer, spring 1999 catalog (p. 58), late winter catalog (p. 17), etc.

6. its bookplates announce: The text is:

Gift of

MRS. OGDEN REID

(Helen Rogers Reid)

President,

NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, INC.

January 2, 1951

Not all the Tribune volumes are bookplated, however.

7. $39.50 an issue: If you buy from Hammacher Schlemmer, you receive the newspaper “set in a hand-bound, leatherette-covered binder that is gold-embossed with the publication title, date, and the recipient’s name,” but that costs $129.95.

CHAPTER 3 — Destroying to Preserve

1. They often do: Canadian libraries do a better job of keeping the originals as well: “With regard to the preservation of originals, the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec (BNQ) deserves special mention. Under the legal deposit regulation of its act, the BNQ receives two copies of every newspaper published in the province of Quebec. One copy is sent immediately to the conservation unit where it is filmed, and placed unfolded in an acid-free carton, in a climate-controlled storage area. Access to originals is strictly controlled.” Mary Jane Starr, “The Preservation of Canadian Newspapers,” Microform Review 15:3 (summer 1986).