Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper

When he wrote this, Baker was passionately devoted to saving books and newspapers. His passion shows through, as does his meticulous research. Unless you are, like me, concerned about the loss of content through microfilming and digitalization, this book may seem tedious. ( )

Double Fold exposes some of the US library faults from the past 50 years, mostly in regards to the microfilming industry. Books and bound newspapers by the hundreds of thousands were disbound, photographed, and discarded all in the name of preservation. Several librarians invented wacky methods for testing paper, including the double fold test, from which the book gets it's title. A national library committee joined with NASA and the CIA to try and come up with a mass de-acidification program (which involved hundreds of pounds of diethyl zinc) to save "brittle" books. DEZ as it's called, is very dangerous, it ignites on contact with oxygen. As a result of various experiments books were scorched, burned, and whole facilities exploded.

Many of the largest institutions in the US no longer have their paper copies of city and national newspapers, because most people got caught up in the microfilm technology craze. Nicholas Baker explains the slippery slope that led to the loss of a lot of cultural resources. In 2000, Baker formed a business to buy old newspapers when he learned that the British Library was planning on dumping it's American collections. He scrambled together as much money as he could, got some grants, and bought 10 tons worth of US bound newspapers when they went up for auction. He didn't expect to become a newspaper librarian, but he has clearly become one, simply because no one else stepped up. ( )

As a librarian who is looking at disposing of print journals when we have stable user-friendly online sources, I often think of this book when we're making weeding decisions! A difference is that journal articles actually suit online access and there has never been anything to recommend microfilm over newsprint for reading newspapers in terms of user experience. But still... ( )

Having read four other works by Baker and having heard interesting things about this book, I decided to pick it up. The previous reviews explain enough of what he's covering to not have to go into it. So I'll stick with my own views on the topic. First, I was initially annoyed because he covered newspapers and I thought to myself, "Who is going to take the time to go through newspapers?" Of course, there are plenty of scholars willing to do so, so that was narrow-minded on my part. Anyway, as he delves further, it helped me to better-realize that newspapers, even more than books, need to be preserved in their original form (or at the very least, they needed to be preserved in their originals when duplication doesn't handle color prints and proper text copying).

Anyway, Baker eventually goes into conversation about books and the destruction of books. Contrary to what others may think, it is in fact the destruction of books being carried out. Information may (or may not) have been preserved by microfilm, but the actual physical books are gone. MIcrofilm is not a book. Yes, I have an attachment to books and I think something is being lost when society is moved away from the physical experience of reading.

Defending Baker against those who claim he's being petty or vindictive with his attacks on people who pushed the microfilming agenda - there are of course exceptions, but either people had a questionable motive for pushing what they were doing, or they were not knowledgeable enough to serve in the capacities they were serving. Either way, it's not excusable for individuals trusted with such an important part of human history to not be up to task.

Finally, for those essentially believing Baker has his head in the sand and finances and space are a huge issue for libraries, they need to look at the numbers. Look how much funding was provided for the microfilming. Is it to be believed that money couldn't have purchased storage? How about the fact that the microfilming itself needs saving? It's more delicate than the printed page - even the acidic page.

Again, a knee-jerk reaction to Baker's book isn't warranted. His notes are extensive and his references are thorough. I'd like to see proof of the same from those who had pushed the microfilm agenda.

For librarians out there, this isn't an attack against you personally and you shouldn't take it as such. Because true librarians are meant to preserve knowledge and those who has so strongly pushed the microfilm switch weren't preserving anything except misinformation. ( )

I had to read this book for the orientation session of my library science program, so my thoughts about it are kind of confused with what the "official" message was. Here goes, though. Nicholson Baker is a novelist and essayist who cares about books. In the course of researching an article, he discovers some troubling information on how and why libraries sometimes discard their books. Double Fold is his "expose" of the library profession, which has been destroying (in his opinion perfectly sound and usable) original copies of old newspapers and books in order to preserve them on sometimes faulty new technology such as microfilm. His conclusion, through his investigative journalism, is that there was a cabal of futurist, gadget-oriented, cold war era librarians that invented the idea of paper "turning to dust" over time in order to push their pet preservation projects and procure additional funding and shelf space for their libraries.

Ok. So. This book was assigned because it was highly controversial. The opinion among actual archivists seems to mainly be that Baker has radically misrepresented the motives of the field, doesn't understand certain basic premises of the way libraries and archives actually work, and generally could have been nicer about it, while still having a few good points. I more or less agree with that: there's no need to introduce a conspiracy theory into the mix, and Baker really doesn't consider the problems of archival appraisal (basically, we can't save everything - we could never store it or make use of it - so we have to choose what to keep and what to toss). He may very well have stirred up a lot of ill will towards a profession that works for the common good of our societal memory in a largely thankless capacity.

On the other hand, I am much more sympathetic to many of his arguments than my professors seemed to want me to be. I would like to see a good empirical study of how long paper actually lasts, and find it somewhat troubling that there really isn't one out there currently (that I know of). Also, microfilm is pretty bad. If you're losing such significant amounts of information with your new technology - well, maybe don't jump into it so far. I'm interested in how the debate applies to digitization - I'll be interested to learn what the stumbling blocks of that will be, and I hope the field will be suitably cautious about it.

So, overall, it was an interesting book. It took a long time to read because I kept having to stop to think through how and why I agreed or disagreed with it. It's a very provocative book. Read it if you're interested in archives and the controversy over original sources, but it should probably be read with an accompanying rebuttal (any online review by someone with a PhD in Library Science will probably do), and taken with a grain of salt. If you took out the accusatory tone the book would have some good points, then again, it wouldn't be a very interesting book without its tone. 4 stars for thought-provoking-ness? ( )