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

02. Scotch-taping of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Esther Boyd-Alkalay and Lena Libman, “The Conservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Laboratories of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem,” Restaurator 18 (1997). The cellotaping, which caused “irreversible damage,” began in the late fifties in the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem; later, some of the tape was removed with trichloroethylene, and then the fragments were reinforced with lens tissue glued on with polyvinyl acetate or Perspex in solution. “As a result, the parchment glitters like glass and becomes rigid and fragile.”

03. “This cannot be emphasized”: Nancy E. Gwinn, ed., Preservation Microfilming: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists (Chicago: American Library Association, 1987), chap. 2, p. 36. Wesley Boomgaarden originally drafted this chapter, according to the preface.

04. “It must be stressed”: Gwinn, Preservation Microfilming, p. 37. The textbook asks: “With the enormous volume of paper-based materials that require reformatting to preserve primarily the intellectual content, can the institution justify microfilming as only an interim measure, and thus retain great quantities of printed materials after microfilming?”

05. book conservators generally report: See, for example, the organization chart published in Peter Sparks, “The Library of Congress Preservation Program,” in The Library Preservation Program: Models, Priorities, Possibilities, ed. Jan Merrill-Oldham and Merrily Smith, proceedings of a conference, April 29, 1983 (Chicago: American Library Association, 1985), p. 71.

06. “With few exceptions”: David H. Stam, “Finding Funds to Support Preservation,” in Merrill-Oldham and Smith, Library Preservation Program. The Rockefeller Foundation in 1940 made a grant to the New York Public Library that “would supply funding to make a master negative from which the income to be derived from future sales would amortize the original investment”—helping libraries to help themselves. Bourke, “Scholarly Micropublishing.”

07. “a lot of material from the Jewish division”: Phone interview with Wesley Boomgaarden, April 21, 2000.

08. “When my hard-working”: Wesley Boomgaarden, “Preservation Microfilming: Elements and Interconnections,” in Preservation Microfilming: Planning and Production, papers from the RTSD Preservation Microfilming Institute, New Haven, April 21, 23, 1988 (Chicago: Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, 1989), p. 8.

09. “most of the filmed volumes”: Committee on Institutional Cooperation, “Coordinated Preservation Microfilming Project,” Annual Report 1995–1996, nova.cic.uiuc.edu/CIC/annrpt/ar95-96/cpmp4.htm (viewed September 25, 2000). This multiphase, NEH-funded enterprise was also called the Cooperative Preservation Microfilming Project.

CHAPTER 12 — Really Wicked Stuff

01. “licensing arrangements”: The phrase appears in the testimony of Peter Sparks before the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, House of Representatives, Oversight Hearing on the Problem of “Brittle Books” in Our Nation’s Libraries, March 3, 1987 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1987), p. 105.

02. “Oh, the odor”: Scott Eidt, phone interview, April 25, 2000. Edward Frankland, the great nineteenth-century chemist who discovered diethyl zinc, wrote in his diary of his early experience with a related compound (dimethyl zinc) that when he exposed the new substance to air there was a “violent action” and a foot-long flame, followed by a “gas of a most insupportable odour.” Colin A. Russell, Edward Frankland: Chemistry, Controversy, and Conspiracy in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 79.

03. Koski: Ahti A. Koski et al., “Studies of the Pyrolysis of Diethylzinc by the Toluene Carrier Method and of the Reaction of Ethyl Radicals with Toluene,” Canadian Journal of Chemistry 54 (1976).

04. “In the late fifties”: Richard D. Smith, whose Wei T’o process was slighted by the Library of Congress for years, published a thorough critique of diethyl zinc in Restaurator, in which he said that it had been tried as an ignition agent for Apollo-Saturn rocket, an assertion that some rocket scientists confirm. Smith’s excellent study is, however, prefaced by several paragraphs of hoo-ha about “the history of modern civilization deteriorat[ing] into dust.” “Deacidifying Library Collections: Myths and Realities,” Restaurator 8 (1987).

05. Ballistic-missile engineers: John J. Rusek, Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Purdue University, phone interview. See also John D. Clark’s entertaining Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 9, 13. Also George P. Sutton, Rocket Propulsion Elements: An Introduction to the Engineering of Rockets, 3d ed. (New York: Wiley, 1963), p. 252.

06. hypergolic: The term “hypergolic” was first used by German rocket scientists. Clark, Ignition, p. 14.

07. “high-energy aircraft and missile fuel”: Hawley’s Condensed Chemical Dictionary, 12th ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993), p. 397.

08. “During the war”: In 1944, the Army was considering the use of pyrophorics, but they had not yet proved “of practical value.” “They are difficult to control and constitute a great storage hazard,” wrote Brigadier General Alden H. Waitt of the Chemical Warfare Service. “However, there are a number of substances that ignite spontaneously on contact with the air, and methods may be devised for making practical use of them.” Gas Warfare: Smoke, Flame, and Gas in Modern War, 2d ed., Fighting Forces ed. (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal, 1944), p. 52.

09. “encapsulated flamethrower”: Interview with Allen Tulis, April 4, 2000. Later, the Air Force picked up on the idea of a pyrophoric flame weapon, adapting it for air-to-ground use, but they chose a slightly less reactive compound called triethyl aluminum in place of diethyl zinc. Triethyl aluminum also bursts into flame on contact with air, but it’s cheaper. Tulis worked on chemical demining and fuel-air explosives, as well.

10. rupture eardrums: For a description of blast injuries related to fuel-air explosives, see United States Department of Defense, “Clinical Presentation of Primary Blast Injury,” Virtual Naval Hospital, www.vnh.org/EWSurg/ch05/05ClinPresPrimBlast.htm (viewed September 25, 2000).

11. its own voraciously combustive chemistry: See G. von Elbe and E. T. McHale, Annual Interim Report: Chemical Initiation of FAE Clouds, report by Atlantic Research Corporation to Bernard T. Wolfson, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. contract no. F49620-77-C-0097 (Washington, D.C.: Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 1979). The report is marked “Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.” Von Elbe was a bomb designer with a Ph.D. from Berlin; he wrote a paper on “The Problem of Ignition” in the Fourth Symposium (International) on Combustion ( Combustion and Detonation Waves ), held at MIT in 1952 (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1953).

13. Dr. John Lee: Much of the Air Force’s FAE research is still restricted; Dr. Lee, however, holds a relevant unclassified patent. John H. Lee, “Chemical Initiation of Detonation in Fuel-Air Explosive Clouds,” U.S. patent no. 6,168,123 (December 1, 1992), which lists diethyl zinc as one of the liquid initiators.

CHAPTER 13 — Getting the Champagne out of the Bottle

01. a grant from the Council: Nancy E. Gwinn, “CLR and Preservation,” College and Research Libraries 42:2 (March 1981).