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

“did not resolve to”: Whitney S. Minkler, Audit Procedures and Inspection Results from 1 % of Microfilm Samples from Ohio State, Yale, and Harvard Universities (Fairfax, Va.: MSTC, March 30, 1993). As part of her “NEH Medieval Institute Microfilming Project,” Sophia Jordan, head of preservation at Notre Dame, made a database of microfilm vendors. Out of the available titles that her group checked, she recorded the percentage that did not “meet preservation standards,” according to a somewhat stringent list of criteria (no master negative exists, etc.). Ninety-four percent of the titles available from University Microfilms did not meet preservation standards, fourteen percent of Columbia’s titles did not, all of Cornell’s did not, a quarter of Harvard’s did not, forty-two percent of New York Public Library’s did not, sixty percent of UC Berkeley’s did not, and so on. Sophia Jordan and Dorothy Paul, NEH Medieval Institute Microfilming Project: Database Report of Previously Filmed Titles Queried (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Libraries, undated [circa 1990]). In providing this report, George Farr of the NEH wrote: “I would observe that the highly developed national standards and expectations for preservation filming that have been followed in NEH-funded projects might not have been in place when the volumes that were the focus of the Notre Dame survey were initially microfilmed.” George Farr, letter to author, April 5, 1999.

CHAPTER 34 — Turn the Pages Once

“cost-effective buffer technology”: Commission on Preservation and Access, Newsletter 21 (March 1990).

Technical Assessment Advisory Committee: The committee had a three-day retreat at the Coolfont Conference Center in September 1990, which the members judged “most productive.” Commission on Preservation and Access, Newsletter, September 1990.

The relatively simple substitution: See my essay “Discards,” in The Size of Thoughts (New York: Random House, 1996).

“Our biggest misjudgment was”: William Welsh, “Can Bill Welsh Conquer Time and Space for Libraries?” interview with Arthur Plotnik, American Libraries 15:11 (December 1984).

“only a small increment”: M. Stuart Lynn, “Digital Technologies, Preservation and Access,” The Commission on Preservation and Access Newsletter 43 (March 1992), www.clir.org/pubs/cpanews/cpan143.htm. Actually, Lynn’s words here are “have our cake and eat it. too” because the OCR program interpreted the comma as a period. Michael Lesk is similarly recorded as estimating the number of “books per square fool” that a building can hold. Michael Lesk, Preservation of New Technology, a report of the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee to the Commission on Preservation and Access (Washington, D.C.: Commission on Preservation and Access, October 1992), www.clir.org/pubs/reports/lesk/lesk2.htm. These are tiny errors that nonetheless demonstrate the importance of keeping the original printed report.

CHAPTER 35 — Suibtermanean Convumision

“anticipated resistance”: Task Force on Collection Management, Systemwide Operations and Planning Group, “Action/Decision Minutes,” February 26, 1999, UCI’s Information Page on UC Systemwide Library Planning, sun3.lib.uci.edu/~staff/system_wide.htm (viewed September 25, 2000).

“digital collections can alleviate”: Anne Kenney, “Digital Image Quality: From Conversion to Presentation and Beyond,” paper presented at the Scholarly Communication and Technology conference, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University, Atlanta, April 24–25, 1997, arl.cni.org/scomm/scat/kenney.htm.

“rapidly self-destructing”: Anne R. Kenney and Lynne K. Personius, The Cornell/Xerox/Commission on Preservation and Access Joint Study in Digital Preservation. Report: Phase 1, “Digital Capture, Paper Facsimiles, and Network Access” (December 1990).

extremely rare math books: Cornell University Library Math Book Collection, moa.cit.cornell.edu/dienst-data/cdl-math-browse.htm. For instance, one of the books, Pierre Maurice Duhem’s Sur les déformations permanentes et l’hysteresis (Brussels: Hayez, 1896), is listed on the OCLC database as existing in two places, at Princeton and at the Burndy Library of MIT. For an early work on hyperspace by Giuseppe Veronese entitled Fondamenti di geometria a più dimensioni (Padua: Tipografia del Seminario, 1891), there are six U.S. libraries on OCLC (and one in São Paulo) listed as owning the original book.

germ-free facsimiles: Kenney and Personius, Cornell/Xerox/Commission on Preservation and Access Joint Study.

Peruvian guano: Solon Robinson, Guano: A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers; Containing Plain Directions How to Apply Peruvian Guano to the Various Crops and Soils of America (New York, 1853). If my count is correct, there are twelve original copies of Guano in the OCLC database (perhaps of two editions, perhaps of one edition differently cataloged), plus twelve microfiche copies made in 1985 by Lost Cause Press and one roll of microfilm produced by the Ohio Historical Society in 1985 and owned by Marietta College. See the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, cdl.library.cornell.edu/chla/. Solon Robinson writes: “With assurances to my friends that I have no other interest in the increased consumption of guano, I am most sincerely and respectfully, Your old Friend, Solon Robinson.”

“There may also be opportunities”: Kenney and Personius, Cornell/Xerox/Commission on Preservation and Access Joint Study.

“escalating cost of storage”: “The Making of America: Creating Electronic Pathways to Our Heritage,” Cornell University Library and Cornell Information Technologies, 1993. One of the aims of the Making of America project was to win over humanities scholars, who “lag behind their counterparts in the sciences and professions in making use of sources on-line.” The proposal also mentions that Cornell “is committed to a policy of no new library building projects for central campus beyond the year 2000.”

subterranean convulsion: “The Java Upheaval,” Manufacturer and Builder, January 1883, p. 219, cdl.library.cornell.edu. The URL for the page is cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?frames=1&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%wFmanu%2Fmanu0015%2F&tif=00225.TIF&cite=http%3A%2F%2Fcdl.library.cornell.edu%2Fcgi=bin%2Fmoa%2Fmoa-cgi%3Fnotisid%3DABS1821-0015-623; select “text” in the box next to “View as” to see the text that has been OCR’d from the image. I searched for the word “mmm” in Cornell’s scan of the monumental and already fully microfilmed compendium of Civil War documents called The War of the Rebellion and found this from volume seven, p. 285, about the capture of Fort Donelson: “Timat evemming lime emmemv landed thirteen steamuboat loads of fresh troops. It was minov- mmm~mniP~st we could not homing maimmtain onr position agaumist smieli overwhnel maiming mmumbers. I xvas Satistie (1 that their last trool)s xvere ot (~mmeral Bimell’s comninand. We felt time wammt of re-elminoreemminemints, bmmt did not ask for thenin, because we knew they were not to be had.” The scanned image of this page is legible; the OCR text is, however, a wreck.

“OCR accuracy is high”: I found this note by clicking on “A note on viewing the plain text of this volume” while browsing by title and year.

“to preserve the informational content”: This production note appears on the first scanned page.

“due to the brittle nature”: Cornell University Library, “The Conversion Process,” Making of America, cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/moa_conversion.htm.