Unnecessarily of the j’accuse tone—naming names, calling out even lowly librarians who don’t have much say. So that’s rude. He’s not wrong, he’s just an asshole. And, big error, one doesn’t need gloves for rare books. Also, by his lights we should never throw anything out. I don’t know what we should keep, but keeping everything seems absurd. That said, microfilm sucks.

I got to page 50 and just couldn't take it anymore. The whole point of the book is that the author is pissed off at the destruction of physical newspapers in favor of microfilm - this is made clear on the inside of the dust jacket. My problem with the book is that the author keeps saying the same thing in slightly different ways. He gives new facts, lays bare outrageous actions and irresponsibilities on the part of librarians - things that should keep me hooked - but everything is just a variation on the same theme. This probably would have made an excellent article, but I just can't get it up for 268 pages of self-righteous outrage. ( )

Although Baker makes some valid points, he totally lost me when he started portraying people who didn't share his view on paper hoarding as criminals and idiots. I'm also not buying his conspiracy theories. I think he went a little overboard and succeeded only in making himself look like a complete loon. ( )

Published in 2001, this is somewhat dated. It is Baker's paean to old paper newspapers and journals and his anathema against microfilm. Baker recounts the history of the twentieth century push for microfilming and underscores the actual truth: it wasn't about saving brittle paper or allowing more access, it was about throwing things out to gain space. Baker does a good job on this history, a good job on undermining the notion that lots of old acidic paper is just seconds from turning into dust. He does a good job showing how people pushed microfilming for their own agendas (he doesn't call it the scourge of bureaucrats, but I will). He does a good job in bemoaning the downsides to microfilm: poor filming, poor image quality, the cost, its unwieldy nature to use.

Now, Baker wrote this when the internet was in its infancy and scanning technology too. We now have excellent book scanners that can scan without disbinding (literally buzz-sawing off the spines of books, etc.). We have the Internet Archive and Google Books doing a pretty good job at scanning and hosting old books, newspapers, journals, and files at repositories gratis to the user. (It all still costs money though.) Even outfits like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com have found ways to scan old microfilm and present it in a good way. Baker seemed just as put off by scanning as he did by microfilming. I wonder if he's tempered his views.

Such scanning allowed me to write a dissertation on place-names in the Spanish New World without going to Spain or any other country. It allows me to do research from my house a lot. Now, I still have to go see documents that aren't scanned, and, yes, it's always more awesome to hold the pages direct in my hand rather than on a screen. But access and quality has improved tremendously. As to microfilm, yes, it is a hassle and often unreadable. But, it has also given me access to things that may have disappeared years ago through age or carelessness or who knows. I have worked with a scanned collection of documents that were lent to a library to be filmed in the 1940s and taken back by the owner. They are now nowhere to be found, so at least we have a microfilm record of them.

Baker writes well, is very opinionated, but overall fair to his interlocutors. A few pictures. Extensive endnotes (in silly new fashion), but informative and interesting nevertheless. An extensive bibliography and index. Well worth the read if you can get it cheap. An update is in order, now two decades gone by. ( )

It's as if the National Park Service felled vast wild tracts of pointed firs and replaced them with plastic Christmas trees. — Nicholson Baker, “Double Fold”

Destroying something to protect it sounds like something out of “Catch-22.” Instead it's something out of the Library of Congress and numerous other prestigious libraries across the United States. What they have destroyed, or allowed to be destroyed, are countless irreplaceable old books and newspapers and, along with them, a good portion of American history.

So argues Nicholson Baker in his persuasive 2001 book “Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.”

Baker attacks the claim that because paper is fragile and deteriorates with time, old books and newspapers should be copied onto microfilm, preferably with government funding. Because copying usually means taking apart these books and newspapers, they are no longer fit to be returned to shelves. So they are discarded. But saving library space, not saving books and newspapers, or even the contents of those books and newspapers, has really been the main objective all along, he says.

To be sure, the purpose of most public libraries is to serve the public, and the public mostly wants to read today's books and today's newspapers, not books and newspapers from a hundred years ago. Libraries must regularly discard older books in order to make room for new ones. Baker argues, however, that major metropolitan libraries, university libraries and especially the Library of Congress should have different standards and different objectives. These are the libraries most used by historians, writers and researchers of all sorts, and these are the people most hurt by the actions of these libraries. (But in smaller towns all over the country, old newspaper stories remain the main source for researching local history.)

Isn't microfilm just as good? During my newspaper career I sometimes had to search for old newspaper stories on microfilm. Rolls of microfilm were certainly lighter and easier to handle than bound volumes of newspapers, and one could speed through the microfilm fairly quickly to find what one was looking for. The problem was being able to actually read what you found. Reproduction on microfilm can be iffy, especially around the edges. It is also in black and white, even though portions of the newspaper pages may have been printed in color. Baker shows examples of newspaper pages from a century ago that had beautiful color drawings and cartoons that appear drab on microfilm.

What's more, Baker says, paper doesn't actually deteriorate as quickly as librarians argued to justify their scheme. Many of us have some very old books in our attics that can still be read without fear they will fall apart in our hands. And old books in libraries don't get heavy use. Usually those historians and researchers are the only people who want to handle them.

Finally, the author says, microfilm has been found to not last as long as those supposedly fragile books and newspapers. There are newer technologies, but how do you make a good digital copy from a blurry, decaying strip of microfilm? You need the originals, and in most cases, these have been destroyed. ( )