Double fold : libraries and the assault on paper
Nicholson Baker (Author)
"Since the 1950s, our country's libraries have followed a policy of "destroying to preserve": They have methodically dismantled their collections of original bound newspapers, cut up hundreds of thousands of so-called brittle books, and replaced them with microfilmed copies - copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age. Half a century on, the results on this policy are jarringly apparent: There are no longer any complete editions remaining of most of America's great newspapers. The loss to historians and future generations in inestimable." "In this book, writer Nicholson Baker explains the marketing of the brittle-paper crisis and the real motives behind it. Pleading the case for saving our newspapers and books so that they can continue to be read in their original forms, he tells how and why our greatest research libraries betrayed the public's trust by selling off or pulping irreplaceable collections. The players include the Library of Congress, the CIA, NASA, microfilm lobbyists, newspaper dealers, and a colorful array of librarians and digital futurists, as well as Baker himself, who discovers that the only way to save one important newspaper archive is to cash in his retirement savings and buy it - all twenty tons of it."--Jacket
Periodical
xii, 370 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm
9780375504440, 0375504443
44732234
Overseas disposal
Original keepsakes
Destroying to preserve
It can be brutal
The Ace comb effect
Virgin mummies
Already worthless
A chance to begin again
Dingy, dreary, dog-eared, and dead
The preservation microfilming office
Thugs and pansies
Really wicked stuff
Getting the champagne out of the bottle
Bursting at the seams
The road to Avernus
It's not working out
Double fold
A new test
Great magnitude
Special offer
3.3 million books, 358 million dollars
Six thousand bodies a day
Burning up
Going, going, gone
Absolute nonsense
Drumbeat
Unparalleled crisis
Microfix
Slash and burn
A swifter conflagration
Crunch
A figure we did not collect
Leaf masters
Turn the pages once
Suibtermanean convumision
Honest disagreement
We just kind of keep track
In good faith