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

Barrow once took a reporter: “The Paper Man,” Richmond News Leader, June 8, 1963; quoted in Gwinn, “CLR and Preservation.”

CHAPTER 19 — Great Magnitude

Stanford University: Sarah Buchanan and Sandra Coleman, Deterioration Survey of the Stanford University Libraries Green Library Stack Collection, June 1979. “When fold test of 6 folds employed at corner; breaking or tearing occurs when corner tugged gently. ” I’m assuming (I hope correctly) that the six folds are single folds, convertible into three double folds.

“in the judgement of experienced”: Robert R. V. Wiederkehr, The Design and Analysis of a Sample Survey of the Condition of Books in the Library of Congress (Rockville, Md.: King Research, 1984), p. 20. Wiederkehr writes that “if a book has paper so brittle that FOLD is 0 to 1, it should be preserved by microfilming rather than deacidification, and is assigned a value for FOLDC1 of 0.”

“The Yale Survey”: Gay Walker et al., “The Yale Survey: A Large-Scale Study of Book Deterioration in the Yale University Library,” College and Research Libraries, March 1985.

“Water leaks occurred”: Gay Walker, “The Evolution of Yale’s Preservation Program,” in Merrill-Oldham and Smith, Library Preservation Program, p. 53.

“To get a piece of the action”: Peter Sparks, “Marketing for Preservation,” in Merrill-Oldham and Smith, Library Preservation Program, p. 75.

Haas’s undergraduate thesis: Warren James Haas, English Book Censorship, Thesis, Bachelor of Library Science, University of Wisconsin (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, for the Association of College and Reference Libraries, 1955), Microcard [microfiche]. Haas begins with a quotation from a 1664 pamphlet that he found in Bigmore and Wyman’s A Bibliography of Printing (1884): “Printing is like a good dish of meat, which moderatly eaten of turns to the nourishment and health of the body; but immoderately, to surfeits and sickness.” It looks as if the Library of Congress microfilmed and discarded an original three-volume Quaritch edition (250 copies printed, 1880–1886) of this work.

Preparation of Detailed Specifications: Warren J. Haas, Preparation of Detailed Specifications for a National System for the Preservation of Library Materials (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, February 1972).

“much master negative microfilm”: Haas, Preparation, p. 10. A master can be hard to find sometimes. One survey noted in 1992 that “many micropublishers currently listed in machine readable bibliographic records have moved, sold all or portions of their businesses, or are no longer supplying microfilm copies of masters.” Erich Kesse, “Survey of Micropublishers,” A Report to the Commission on Preservation and Access, October 1992. Robert DeCandido says that “the master has to some extent become a public resource. Certainly a compelling argument can be made that the fate of that film is a matter of public concern and its destruction or loss is against the public interest. In the same way that historic and cultural landmarks are legally protected even if privately owned, so should preservation microfilm masters have some sort of restrictions on their use and disposal.” True, and yet a “microfilm master” is in fact a copy: DeCandido, who ran the Shelf and Binding Preparation Office at the New York Public Library during a period when the library was destroying large numbers of books, fails to extend his analysis to cover the real master — not the film, but the original document. Robert DeCandido, “Considerations in Evaluating Searching for Microform Availability,” Microform Review 19:3 (summer 1990).

“ultrafiche”: See E. M. Grieder, “Ultrafiche Libraries: A Librarian’s View,” Microform Review, April 1972. “Two- and four-year colleges or emerging universities are most likely to be tempted by these collections. They may feel the lack of large foundation collections, and perhaps hunger for more impressive libraries.” See also Mark R. Yerburgh and Rhoda Yerburgh, “Where Have All the Ultras Gone? The Rise and Demise of the Ultrafiche Library Collection, 1968–1973,” Microfilm Review 13 (fall 1984). In 1968, a subsidiary of Encyclopaedia Britannica called Library Resources charged $21,500 for more than twelve thousand books, pamphlets, documents, and periodicals, reproduced on 12,474 ultrafiches. While acknowledging that ultrafiche collections ultimately failed, the Yerburghs contend that the “librarian must declare war on microform illiteracy and user resistance.” They point out that a 1968 proposal by David Hays was the proximate cause of the ultrafiche fervor. In 1966, however, Clapp’s Council on Library Resources had paid Republic Aviation, builder of fighter planes and photoreconnaissance aircraft, to investigate “an ultra-fiche storage and retrieval system.” See David G. Hays, A Billion Books for Education in America and the World; a Proposal (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1968); and Council on Library Resources, Twelfth Annual Report (1968).

“should weigh heavily”: Haas, Preparation, p. 25.

“federal financial support”: Haas, Preparation, p. 27.

even perhaps a film: Haas, Preparation, p. 14.

former OSS outpost chief in Paris: John Edward (Jack) Sawyer was head of the Mellon Foundation from 1975 to 1987. His career in the Office of Strategic Services is mentioned in Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 385–86.

“savvy, shrewdness”: James M. Morris, “The Foundation Connection,” in Influencing Change in Research Librarianship: A Festschrift for Warren J. Haas, ed. Martin M. Cummings (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library Resources, 1988), p. 73.

“Careful analytical work”: [Warren Haas], Brittle Books: Reports of the Committee on Preservation and Access (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library Resources, 1986), p. 7.

CHAPTER 20 — Special Offer

“collection building”: Veaner, “Crisis in Micropublication,” pp. 448–53. In 1990, Susan Cady wrote that the “quality of a research library is still measured primarily by the size of its holdings. Microforms are counted within those holdings as items owned (film rolls, microfiche pieces, etc.) and titles held. Thus they enhance the status of the institution at a relatively low cost in terms of both purchase price and storage space.” Cady herself has no regrets about the loss of the newspapers: she says that the “preservation of newspapers by microfilming has been one of the real success stories of this technology.” Susan A. Cady, “The Electronic Revolution in Libraries: Microfilm Déjà Vu?” College and Research Libraries, July 1990.

accreditation: Bourke, “Scholarly Micropublishing.”

shady entrepreneurs: Veaner, “Crisis in Micropublication.”

“disposing easily and profitably”: Murray S. Martin, “Matters Arising from the Minutes: A Further Consideration of Microform-Serials Exchange,” Microform Review 2 (April 1973); and “New Microfilms for Old Books,” American Libraries, February 1970. Martin points out that “a minimum sale of ten to fifteen copies is necessary for a micropublisher to reach a break-even point.” When he was associate dean of libraries at Penn State, Martin wrote: “It may save money to buy microforms instead of holding on to bound volumes, but if the volumes were not used before, they are unlikely to be used in the new format in which case even more money would be saved by discarding them altogether.” Murray Martin, “Promoting Microforms to Students and Faculty,” Microform Review 8:2 (spring 1979).