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

24. Itek Corporation: Itek’s role in the CIA’s Corona satellite program is covered in Smith, “Design and Engineering of Corona’s Optics”; and in Shulman, “Code Name Corona.”

25. ex-CIA paramilitarist: Frank Lindsay was Itek’s president beginning in 1962; Lindsay was deputy chief of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination from 1949 to 1951. “He joined the Ford Foundation in 1953, served on several Presidential commissions, and, since 1962, has been president of the Itek Corporation. After the 1968 election, President-elect Nixon asked Lindsay to head a secret task force on CIA reorganization.” R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 161.

26. the stacks would be closed: “The adoption of an automated system will require that the Library stacks be closed in order to insure the accuracy of the various recording functions. Closing the stacks will result in a reduced need for subject-related classification as a medium for stack arrangement, since the stacks will no longer serve as a single large browsing collection. As a result, new methods of efficient storage based on demand frequency or other criteria will become feasible.” King et al., Automation and the Library of Congress, p. 43.

27. funded by the Department of Defense: King et al., Automation and the Library of Congress, p. 68.

28. Filesearch: Automation and the Library of Congress, pp. 47, 76. The Filesearch system was built by FMA, Inc.; the initials stood for Fenn, McPherson, and Arsenault — three engineers from Magnavox who developed this variation on Vannevar Bush’s Rapid Selector microfilm machine. Robert M. Hayes, letter to author, September 1, 2000.

29. military used the Filesearch: “As with most early computer systems, FileSearch information can not be accessed as originally designed. FileSearch was used primarily by the defense and intelligence communities and was not adopted by the civilian sector in any numbers. Thus, there was no commercial commitment to maintain this particular system. Unable to make Filesearch work on current hardware, the National Archives re-filmed the Vietnamese documents on standard microfilm. Historians should resign themselves to facing similar frustrations with computer databases.” Michael E. Unsworth, “A Lesson Not Learned: The MACV ‘Answer Machine,’ ” abstract of a paper given at a symposium, “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam” (April 1996), www.ttu.edu/~vietnam/96papers/macv.htm (viewed September 14, 2000).

30. wiry, energetic: Clapp is so described in Louise S. Robbins, “The Library of Congress and Federal Loyalty Programs, 1947–1956: No ‘Communists or Cocksuckers,’ ” Library Quarterly 64:4 (October 1994). The title quotes Luther Evans, who informed poet Karl Shapiro that he didn’t want either of them in the Library of Congress.

31. Lawrence F. Buckland: Interview with author, October 5, 2000.

32. Henriette Avram: Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, “Henriette Avram, Associate Librarian for Collections Services, to Retire from the Library of Congress,” ALCTS Network News, 1:8 (June 25, 1991), www.ala.org/alcts/publications/an2/an2v1/an2.v1_no8.htm.

33. Some of Verner Clapp’s ideas: Library of Congress, Verner Warren Clapp, 1901–1972: A Memorial Tribute (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1973).

34. John H. Ottemiller: Yale’s Ottemiller is described as “shrewd, tough, and crusty” in Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), which mentions his wartime work for the Office of Strategic Services with Frederick Kilgour, later of OCLC.

35. “a possible need”: Ottemiller quotes Fremont Rider’s estimate that Yale would own two hundred million volumes by 2040 and says, “Panic, then, becomes a moderate word which no longer exaggerates the situation.” The grant was for fifty thousand dollars, allowing the selective retirement program to increase its throughput from twenty thousand to sixty thousand books a year (some moved to departmental libraries or storage, some microfilmed and then discarded, some discarded outright), “thereby providing a body of material large enough to validate statistical data as soon as possible.” Ottemiller, “Selective Book Retirement Program,” p. 72.

36. Arthur Carson: Interview with author, June 23, 2000. The National Security Agency was initially interested in Carson’s crystal storage system, as was the FBI (they were thinking of using it for a visual database of fingerprints), but it was the Council on Library Resources that came through with a contract. Before starting Carson Laboratories, Carson says that he designed a small, stealthy, nuclear-powered submarine, to be made of fiberglass, that he very nearly convinced the English to build; however (according to Carson), Hyman Rickover, head of the U.S. nuclear fleet, didn’t want the British admiralty to be operating nuclear subs and used his influence to have the project dropped.

37. Fiber optics?: Council on Library Resources, Seventh Annual Report, period ending June 30, 1963, p. 28. The Institute for Scientific Information, founded by Eugene Garfield, published Current Contents and the Science Citation Index; Garfield called Clapp a “great gadgeteer.” Eugene Garfield, “Information Science and Technology: Looking Backward and Looking Forward,” a lecture at the Catholic University of America, January 25, 1999, students.cua.edu/org/asis/jan99.htm; and Eugene Garfield, Eugene Garfield, Ph.D. (homepage), www.garfield.library.upenn.edu.

38. “reducing the required number”: Council on Library Resources, Fifth Annual Report (1961), p. 25.

39. combine closed-circuit TV: Council on Library Resources, Second Annual Report (1958), p. 24.

40. de Florez Company: Council on Library Resources, Second Annual Report (1958), p. 24. Clapp also hired the Defense Electronic Products division of Radio Corporation of America to build a page-turner. RCA came up with a system of air blowers and “thumbs”: “Once the top page is pulled from the stack, it is quickly blown by jets of air to the opposite side where another thumb catches it and pulls it tightly to the portion of the book on that side. This machine is endowed with four thumbs, not just two.” Radio Corporation of America, Defense Electronic Products, “A Proposal for an Automatic Page Turner: Submitted to the Council on Library Resources in Response to ‘An Automatic Page Turner — the Basic Requirements,’ November 1, 1957.”

41. radiological weapons: A memo to the chief of operations of the CIA’s Directorate for Plans (DD/P), dated 28 October 1954, discusses the possibility of irradiating the Soviet Union “in conjunction with appropriate psychological warfare measures” and “paramilitary exploitation,” possibly accompanied by radio broadcasts and leaflets emphasizing the “humanitarian concern of the United States” (as evidenced by the use of this “relatively benign” weapon), yet stressing, on the other hand, that “full recovery would depend upon complete inactivity, in the absence of which sterility, prolonged illness and possibly death would ensue.” The proposal’s attachment (dated June 6, 1952) discusses the “need of many special techniques and devices not commercially available or as yet undeveloped or unknown”; it proposes “to establish a research program under the over-all guidance of a CIA Research Board chaired by Admiral Luis De Flores [ sic ]” and to “continue the contract with his company.” The document is one of thousands that have been scanned, OCR’d, and made available on the Web as part of a federal investigation into human radiation experiments; see Argonne National Laboratory, Human Radiation Experiments Information Management System, record number c0030 (“CIA, Memorandum for DD/P from DC/SE, dated 28 October 1954, subject: same as above”), hrex.dis.anl.gov. When in 1954 a germ-warfare scientist jumped out a window following a CIA-sponsored drug-research session, de Florez sent a memo to CIA head Allen Dulles asking him not to issue reprimands to those in charge of the experimental program because it would interfere with “the spirit of initiative and enthusiasm so necessary in our work.” John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York: Times Books, 1979), chap. 5.