 |
Don't Fold Up:
Responding to Nicholson Baker's Double Fold
by Richard
J. Cox | April 18, 2001
See also:
SAA Council's Response
to Nicholson Baker's Double Fold
 Introduction
This
essay is a preliminary effort to assess the implications of Nicholson
Baker's new book on library preservation. I consider it a work in progress,
for three reasons. First, Baker's tome requires detailed responses from
many sectors of the library, archives, and preservation communities,
as I describe in the review below. It also requires careful and calculated
responses since it is a serious work attracting broad media attention.
For one thing, Double Fold, unlike his previous New Yorker
articles, provides detailed annotation and documentation that needs to
be carefully analyzed.
Second,
this review is being offered before my debate with Mr. Baker at
Simmons College on May 16, 2001, so it is offered without any additional
insights gained by how and what the author of Double Fold emphasizes
in public presentations about his book and the public responses to the
book are only beginning to appear (and only those in the major newspapers
and book review publications). My previous response to Mr. Baker, published
as "The Great Newspaper Caper: Backlash in the Digital Age," First
Monday 5 (December 4, 2000), available at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_12/cox/,
was written before I read his full book or the early reviews of it (I
have cited and quoted liberally from these reviews because they also suggest
reasons why we need to take seriously Nicholson Baker and his arguments),
and it also represents a preliminary response (although I do not think
I have changed my mind in any substantial ways since reading the book).
Third,
this is an incomplete response since it reflects my perspective as an
archivist, a profession that I am not sure Nicholson Baker understands
or at least can distinguish from the library discipline. My response from
this perspective does not necessarily cover all the dimensions of Baker's
arguments or targets. In fact, I am writing as one who is most focused
on the matters of archival appraisal, education, and the application of
technologies. At the moment I am preparing a longer response to Baker,
deriving from my First Monday essay, this review, and a paper prepared
for the Simmons debate for a collection of essays reexamining archival
appraisal.
A Jolt
from the Blue
Imagine
that you woke up one morning to discover that archives, historical manuscripts,
rare books, and newspaper collections were the subject of journalists,
book reviewers, and radio and talk show hosts around the country. Imagine
that the issue of preservation, even its nuances from its fellow function
conservation, was being contemplated by the news media. Imagine that the
purpose of libraries and archives was being considered, anew, by social
pundits through every conceivable media outlet.
If I had
started off an essay like this a few months ago, people would have pointed
at me and murmured, like the John Lennon song, that I was a "dreamer."
Archivists, and librarians for that matter, are not accustomed to being
the topic of national discourse, despite more than two decades of discussion
and efforts about the merits of public programming to change this. Occasionally
this changes, such as with the controversy about Holocaust-era assets
or the revelations about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, but in such
cases books and records or libraries and archives or librarians and archivists
play a supporting, if important, role. Archivists often take a kind of
perverse pride in not being understood, making jokes about how confused
others seem to be when we introduce ourselves as an archivist or manuscript
curator or special collections librarian. However, in one major area,
archivists and librarians feel they have made great strides in persuading
the public—and that is the importance of preservation and the steps
needed to contend with ensuring that books and records are available
for
many generations ahead.
Now, we
find ourselves in the news. We no longer have to imagine what this would
be like, because the unimaginable has happened—we are in the news
(maybe we are the news)—and because the scrutiny may get more intense,
thanks to the publication of Nicholson Baker's book, Double Fold: Libraries
and the Assault on Paper (New York: Random House, 2001), ISBN 0-375-50444-3,
$25.95. Librarians (and archivists by implication) are being discussed
in publications like the New York Times, Newsweek, the Christian
Science Monitor, and the New York Review of Books. Yet, something
is amiss. Librarians and archivists are being attacked in the very area
they thought they had gained substantial public support, the preservation
of our documentary heritage. And they are not just being sniped at, they
are under a major siege—perhaps one that is just getting started.
Robert Darnton, in his review, notes that Double Fold is a "J'accuse pointed
at the library profession" ("The Great Book Massacre," New
York Review of Books 48 [April 26, 2001], p. 16). The David Gates
review of the book in the April 15, 2001, New York Times Book Review was
the cover story with the headline shouting "Vandals in the Stacks!" and
featuring a less than flattering illustration depicting librarians (and
archivists?) climbing up a stack of newspapers to destroy them before
the public gets access to them. With such racy and controversial sentiments,
I suspect we may see Nicholson Baker on television talk shows and hear
him on radio in the near future (perhaps this may have already happened).
Who Is
This Guy?
Baker is,
as most know, a novelist and essayist who first came to the attention
of librarians and archivists with his writings about the destruction
of
card catalogs and books at the San Francisco Public Library in the early
1990s (his 1994 essay, "Discards,"—the opening salvo in his becoming
a library activist—has been reprinted in his 1997 The Size of
Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber [New York: Vintage Books, 1977],
pp. 125-181). Since the mid-1980s he has produced a series of novels and
one volume of essays, building a reputation as one of America's finest
and most interesting writers. Double Fold, while it is Baker's
first major nonfiction volume, is not a major departure from either his
interests or his writing style, an important point because many seem so
willing to dismiss him because he is not an expert on libraries, preservation,
or the issues he is discussing. I think this is a mistake.
Double
Fold is a natural extension of his literary work (something that Darnton
and Gates both suggest in their reviews as well). Arthur Saltzman, an
English professor at Missouri Southern State College and author of an
analysis of Baker's writings (Understanding Nicholson Baker [Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999]) provides substantial evidence
about Baker's literary methods and interests.
According
to Saltzman, one of the keys to Baker's success is his "extraordinary
attention to ordinary objects" (p. 1) and the everyday (p. 12). Baker's
writing style includes a "jeweler's intensity of focus, a forensic scientist's
ferocity of detail, a monk's humble delight in private discipline, and
a satirist's sensitivity to oddities and errors" (p. 13). In one novel, The Mezzanine, there is worry about the demise of the old-style
vending machine. In another, Vox, telephone sex seems to be treated
in much the manner in which modern critics Sven Birkerts and Roland Barthes
discuss the pleasures of reading text. In The Fermata, the protagonist
can freeze time and motion and extract information from wallets, purses,
and other sources.
Saltzman,
reflecting on Baker's collection of essays published as The Size of
Thoughts, notes that some think Baker is an "essayist masquerading
as a novelist," wanting to "lecture on the luster and necessity that live
in ordinary things or to rail against the casualties one allows them to
become" (p. 131). It is not difficult to surmise that Baker's Double
Fold, focusing on what is happening with books, newspapers, and card
catalogs—all certainly everyday objects—is part of his general
orientation to life and not an aberration from his previous literary pursuits.
Saltzman argues that Baker is fighting with the "plight of obsolescence";
"Baker trails behind the changing times, raking the fossil remains, picking
up the sloughs" (p. 143). For Saltzman, Baker is battling with "cultural
amnesia" and he is a "conservationist of the highest order" (pp. 178,
181). Some might believe that Baker would make a good archivist, focused
as he is on details, societal memory, and preservation.
A reading
of Double Fold by an archivist or librarian might quickly disabuse
one of the idea that Baker has missed his calling, given the book's critical
and conspiratorial tone in describing libraries and archives. It would
be a mistake to dismiss Baker's tome because Double Fold is well
written, amply documented, and quite persuasive. Robert Darnton, himself
a persuasive writer and friend of libraries and archives, notes the "spell
of Baker's rhetoric," even though Baker substantially stacks the arguments
in his favor and against the custodians of books and archives ("The Great
Book Massacre," pp. 16, 17).
Also, as
Baker states in his preface, he is a lover of libraries, and anyone reading
Double Fold will be convinced of this. For a major literary figure
to take the time to write such a book, possibly with far less potential
financial gain and the distractions from other writing, also suggests
that Baker has made a commitment to take on this challenge because he
is concerned about the fate of the books and newspapers he is writing
about.
It is also
not difficult to believe in his passion for his cause, since Double
Fold reveals that he is not a fan of those who run libraries and who
make decisions about preservation and reformatting. Just as librarians
long ago discovered that they can convince the public to love books and
even libraries but not necessarily understand the professionals who manage
them, so Baker has driven a wedge in between the objects (books) and the
places (libraries) where they are stored and the people (librarians and
preservation administrators) who administer them.
A Jeremiad
One may
be amazed about how persuasive Baker's arguments appear to be. I was
dumbfounded, for example, that although Robert Darnton notes that Baker "overstates
his case" and that his book suffers at times from the confusion of "investigative
journalism" with history, that Darnton still agrees with the premise
of Double Fold: "Hyperrealism as a morality tale: it is a tour de
force and a great read. But is it true? On the whole, I think it is, although
it is less innocent than it seems. It should be read as a journalistic
jeremiad rather than as a balanced account of library history over the
last fifty years" ("The Great Book Massacre," p. 19).
Darnton
even takes seriously Baker's policy recommendations, which take up one
(final) page of the text and look like a hasty add-on. That Darnton
believes
that Baker's "policy" recommendations "coincide" with a draft report
issued by the Council on Library and Information Resources, the report
is entitled The Evidence in Hand: The Report of the Task Force on the Artifact
in Library Collections and is available at http://www.clir.org/
is also surprising since the CLIR report recognizes the complexities and
challenges associated with defining, identifying, and selecting artifacts
while Baker adheres (seems to anyway) to a Romantic notion that all
originals ought to and must be saved. It is obvious that Baker's book
is striking at the heart of something many feel passionately about, the
maintenance of artifacts.
Double
Fold focuses on what has been done in libraries and archives (although
the emphasis is on libraries and books), specifically the use of microfilming
and the subsequent destruction of newspapers and books for their reformatting
in order to preserve their content. Microfilm has been a poor choice,
resulting in poor copies and leading to the massive destruction of books
and newspapers. Baker's colorful language suggests that these libraries
and other institutions have produced a "historical record compromised
and disfigured" (p. 136), a "cleanout" of the libraries (p. 15), and a
"strip-mined history" (p. 20). While digitization is only dealt with
towards the end of the book, Baker clearly argues that digitization is
more of
the same and may present even greater problems because of the costs and
technologies involved (p. 249).
A Conspiracy?
Double
Fold is not a mere critique of the preservation methods of librarians;
instead, it looks for a conspiracy (and looks and looks). Perhaps Baker
is sincere in his convictions or simply frustrated with all the hyperbole
about the preservation mandate, or, maybe he knows that conspiracies
sell
better. Would a book critiquing library and archives preservation, minus
a conspiracy theory, be featured on the pages of the leading newspapers
and book review outlets? Probably not. Its fate would be to exist as
an
internal document, discussed and debated deep within the professional
journals and conferences. Baker may have given us the opportunity and
the motivation (indeed, the absolute necessity) to speak out in a much
more public forum not merely as advocates for a particular position (Baker's
main frustration may be with the intense marketing of a few dramatic,
saleable points—a large portion of the print/paper heritage is on
paper that becomes "brittle" and turns to "dust"), but as explainers
of complex and difficult responsibilities faced by librarians, archivists,
and preservation administrators.
There are
weaknesses in this book, and they may prove to weaken Baker's purpose.
The most obvious weakness is Baker's invective against those he sees
as
responsible for the debacle he insists has happened. He repeatedly mentions
the "incessant library propaganda" foisted on the public, policy makers,
and funders (pp. 5, 6, 18, 41, 68-69, 194, 196, 204), clearly arguing
that they lied and, just as importantly, tried to conceal the evidence
of their misdeeds. Those of us who have been interested in public outreach
have probably viewed the preservation advocacy as major, exemplary successes.
Baker argues that the architects of this preservation movement have been
secretive, "like weapons procurers at the Department of Defense" (pp.
122-123) and his constant references to the CIA, federal funding, and
other like features of the preservation movement all seem rather benign
or downright silly.
More serious
charges are leveled by Baker in Double Fold. Library administrators,
according to Baker, have not been doing their jobs (p. 13), participating
in a "slow betrayal of an unknowing nation" (p. 32) and destroying whatever
trust the public should have had in them (p. 104). Most importantly, Baker
goes after the brittle books effort, berating both the notion of "brittle"—and
the idea that books were going to turn into "dust"—and the "crisis"
produced by the problem (p. 211). As Baker powerfully declares, "There
has been no apocalypse of paper" as many seemed to predict (p. 143),
leading Baker to wonder what all the fuss was really about.
Baker may
be way too creative a writer for his own good when he tries to figure
out how and why these decisions were being made. Perhaps his next book
might be a diatribe against the entire advertising industry, because it
seems that Baker is mostly upset that librarians have pushed a program
that has been reasonably successful in reformatting newspapers, books,
and other traditional print resources that seemed endangered and that
he sees some evidence for being somewhat exaggerated. Ultimately, his
anecdotal descriptions of books declared to be brittle a decade before
that are found to be still existing and, worse, that turn up with deaccession
marks and command hefty prices as collectibles really seem to miss the
point not all books are worth saving, that market prices (which are hardly
rational) should play a minor role in the preservation efforts, and that
libraries and archives have other priorities and limited funds.
There are
various flavors in Baker's concoction. At times, one gets the sense of
well-intentioned but misguided decision-making operating within libraries.
Baker mentions that these librarians were involved in "impetuously technophilic
decisions" (p. 83) and often operated within a "full futuristic swing"
(p. 93). They bet too much on what microfilm would do for them and how
well it would work (p. 14, 22). More often, however, the librarians come
across as evil or as dupes or just plain stupid. The source of the book's
title, the test long used for determining how brittle a book's pages may
be, is a good example of how Baker approaches his subject: "The fold text,
as it has been institutionalized in research libraries, is often an instrument
of deception, almost always of self-deception." "It takes no intelligence
or experience to fold a corner, and yet the action radiates an air of
judicious connoisseurship. Because it is so undiscriminatingly inclusive,
and cheap, and quantifiable—because it can be tuned to tell administrators
precisely what they want to hear—the fold test has become an easy
way for libraries to free up shelves with a clear conscience" (p. 161).
That Baker gets hot about such issues can be seen in his characterization
of the double fold test as "utter horseshit and craziness" (p. 157).
No one today will not acknowledge that mistakes were made with microfilming,
especially in producing poor images, or even that some of the arguments
for preservation decisions were overstated, but it is one thing to criticize
and note problems and quite another to simply denounce all the intentions
of what librarians and archivists were doing.
Note how
easily one reads a criticism of a particular test as it transforms into
a grand conspiracy. Baker really believes that the entire preservation
movement of the past couple of generations has been part of an effort
merely to save shelf space—an argument he repeats at every available
opportunity (pp. 16, 26, 31, 35, 36, 67, 81, 82, 97, 100, 139, 181-182,
183, 233)—in which the "bones of the collection [in this instance,
the one at the Library of Congress] were deformed in a deliberate squeeze"
(p. 140). This is why Baker is so frustrated by the newspaper microfilming
efforts, because once the papers were filmed it was not just the actual
papers that were filmed that were destroyed, but original runs of the
papers in many other libraries and archives (p. 255). The newspaper microfilming
has, according to Baker, "drained beauty and color and meaning from the
landscape of the knowable" (p. 259). And the emergence of the brittle
books program was part of an effort to divert attention away from the
obvious failures in microfilm (pp. 168, 171-172). And here we see the
names of many we all knew or know—Battin, Cunha, Kenney, Lesk—all
tripped up in some sinister activities, or so says Baker. Has every library
tossed its original newspapers because of the availability of the microfilm?
Was the brittle books program really a scheme hatched to compensate for
other preservation failures? Has all of this really been part of a great
effort to save shelf space? We need to develop detailed responses to
these
(and other) charges because Baker makes it all sound so plausible and
so bad.
The Fundamental
Weakness of Double Fold
The fundamental
weakness of Baker's argument may be his belief, more implicit than explicit,
that everything can and must be saved in its original state.
As an archivist, this is my main concern with the book. Baker wants those
newspapers in the original because the size of the typical newspaper is
important (p. 24) and because microfilm projects usually do not capture
all of the various editions many major urban dailies produced (p. 47).
We need every edition of every newspaper? So says Baker.
Baker vents frustration that microfilm, at least in its heyday, was linked
with destruction (p. 25, 145) and with the "befuddling divergence" between
conservation and preservation where one involves saving originals and
the other their destruction (pp. 107-108). Baker wants the paper saved
because he believes that we need to study the physical history and durability
of early wood-pulp paper (p. 58). Archivists know, however, that saving
every item is not possible—we can't even examine all the records—and
the archivists and their allies have been developing selection schemes
and strategies for years as a means to cope with such challenges.
More sensibly,
Baker wonders why we can't have both the originals and copies (p. 67)—and,
of course, we can have the originals, microfilmed copies, and digitized
versions on the World Wide Web, assuming we can find the resources to
do such work. It is because of this perspective that the one true hero
in Double Fold seems to be the bibliographer and print scholar
G. Thomas Tanselle who knows that "all books are physical artifacts, without
exception, just as all books are bowls of ideas" (p. 224). So, save it all.
Tanselle
does make compelling arguments for why scholars need original objects,
print and manuscript (I have read and used his writings for more than
a decade myself), but the fact is that libraries and archives have many
other competing priorities with limited resources. Besides, the fact that
some scholarship requires such original artifacts does not mean
that it can be completely accommodated. What about other challenges,
such
as the digitally-born objects and records systems, and the other research
and purposes served by records that extend far beyond the scholarship
on books, printing, and other related matters? Government archives
are
saving records to ensure accountability. Corporate records management
programs are administering recordkeeping systems to ensure legal and
regulatory
compliance. The world, at least that for libraries and archives, may
be a bit more complex than Nicholson Baker knows or cares to consider.
This
gets us back to the point Robert Darnton made about the "prosecutorial" tone
of Double Fold. Baker would be a good attorney. And, as a
result, the library and archives community needs some good defense attorneys
too.
Archivists
know that saving everything is simply impossible, yet this point of Baker's
may be what has the most resonance with the public. Malcolm Jones, general
editor of Newsweek, was willing to concede that Baker is a "zealot
and a polemicist," but he continued: "But he has one towering and inarguable
fact on his side: when it comes to books and especially newspapers, nothing
beats the original. Historians know this. Librarians, who are after all
curators of physical objects, ought to. The real lunatics in this story
are the bibliobureaucrats who've come close to destroying the nation's
libraries in the name of saving them" (Malcolm Jones, "Paper Tiger: Taking
Librarians to Task," Newsweek, April 16, 2001, http://www.msnbc.com/news/556235.asp).
Baker wades in, pleading, "Leave the books alone, I say, leave them alone,
leave them alone" (p. 135). And by the time you finish the book, you
want them to leave everything alone as well. But consider the weakness
of this.
Just letting everything accumulate, and leaving it there in its original
form, assumes that libraries and archives do not make selections to begin
with (Baker constantly focuses on the Library of Congress as serving
as
a repository for all printed, copyrighted books), that there are not
accidents and catastrophes that weed out such natural accumulations,
or that many
(most) books and archives will not be used for decades or more (or, perhaps,
not used at all).
Does
Baker Understand Libraries or Archives?
Double
Fold is a book by an individual who loves libraries but who perhaps
does not understand them (I love my wife and daughter but that does not
always mean I understand them, and they would be the first to admit this).
Another weakness is the lack of distinction about types of libraries and
the scope of other responsibilities and mandates made by Baker when considering
the plight of the preservation of the book, the newspaper, and the artifacts
housed in libraries. As I have already mentioned, archives are barely
figured in Baker's book. One does not sense that Baker understands the
differences between archives and libraries, and in fairness not many outside
these disciplines perceive the differences, certainly not how difficult
it would be to scale up the preservation and access challenges posed by
the countless unique materials housed in archives and the growing challenges
of electronic recordkeeping systems. Indeed, one must acknowledge that
Baker confuses things because when he focuses on libraries he stresses
their archival role, arguing that librarians' "primary task" is
to be "paper-keepers" (p. 94). This might be true for large libraries
like the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the major
academic research libraries around the country, but they represent only
a fraction of all the libraries in existence. And these libraries serve
many other and often competing functions ranging from community literacy
programs to community social centers; for most libraries, the kinds of
issues Baker discusses are way out of scope for them except for
hoping they have the funds to purchase the microfilm copies or to sustain
programs where they can provide access to the online digital versions
of the newspapers, books, and journals—so that they can provide
access to information their patrons need and want. When Baker does mention
access,
it is limited to the kind of scholarship carried out in the academic
or major research libraries (p. 257).
Managing
libraries and archives are difficult, with competing priorities and needs
and too few funds to meet all the needs and to solve all the problems.
Nancy Boothe, in a posting to the Archives and Archivists Listserv on
April 16, 2001, reproducing the text of a letter she sent to the New
York Times Book Review, captured the dimension of this problem when
she wondered if Mr. Baker's newspaper repository will include the services
of a "staff of librarians who have cataloged all the newspapers, including
item-by-item holdings, years published, and variant titles"; "a number
of trained preservation folks, who do emergency—but long-lasting—repair
on ailing wood-pulp paper so we researchers can handle and decipher the
originals"; "a large, strong and literate crew of people who shelve the
bound volumes or loose newspapers in boxes, as well as retrieve them for
researchers (with a short turnaround time)"; and staff and equipment
to make the appropriate copies when researchers need them. Good points.
Many
probably hope that Mr. Baker holds onto his newspaper repository long
enough so that he learns about the daily decisions and complicated choices
that librarians and archivists have to make, but I have already heard
rumors that he is negotiating the sale of his holdings to a major research
library.
An Opportunity
to Explain Ourselves?
Having
stated all this, however, Double Fold may be a powerful stimulant
to rethinking about what has been going on in American libraries and
archives
when preservation is considered. Merle Rubin's review ended with this
assessment: "If there is any hope of slaying this particular bureaucratic,
paper-devouring dragon, a sea change in mentality is needed, and Baker's
eye-opening (and page-turning) book may help alter the climate of opinion
before it is too late" ("The Bonfire of Books," Christian Science Monitor,
5 April 2001, http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/05/p20s1.htm).
And, it is a breach of trust that the reviewers immediately pick up on,
leading the Kirkus Reviews to conclude, "if even half of what Baker
alleges is true, some of America's most honored librarians have a lot
of explaining to do" (69 [1 February 2001]: 35). Lest some quickly dismiss
such a possibility, they should remember the impact of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring on the environmental movement, Jane Jacobs's Life
and Death of American Cities on urban planning, Ralph Nader's critique
(Unsafe at Any Speed) of the Corvair on the American automobile
industry, and Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death on the
funeral industry. Double Fold may be another similar epoch-changing
publication, perhaps persuading the library and archives community that
it needs to rethink how it approaches preserving its books and records
or at least that it needs to better explain just what it is doing (the
CLIR draft report on the artifact already suggests this). I can see in
my mind the Congressional hearings and testimonies that will keep us up
late at night watching C-Span, especially as Baker is scrupulous in indicating
every preservation project, method, and conference that is funded by federal
dollars. Someone will ask, I am sure, whether all the millions of dollars
were worth anything, and they will draw on all the questions and accusations
raised by Baker.
Now, some
archivists might take solace after they read this book because it is
mainly directed at librarians. I am not sure whether Baker really understands
the distinctions between librarians and archivists. For example, at
one
point Baker notes that a "true archive must be able to tolerate years
of relative inattention" (p. 242), neglecting to reflect on the fact
that archives must be carefully monitored to ensure that mold, rodents,
and
other problems do not attack those precious paper documents or that archives
are dealing with electronic recordkeeping systems requiring intervention
at the point of their creation and design and considerable monitoring
and use thereafter. He expresses no concern about such matters. This
may
not be an important point, because it is the public, reading Double
Fold, which lumps us all us together. Rob Walker, reviewing the book
for The Standard, states that the book "makes a surprisingly persuasive
argument for the preservation of all kinds of old records" (April 9,
2001, http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,23469,00.html).
For the public, newspapers are old records and old records must be what
archivists are caring for behind their walls.
The one
thing archivists cannot do is to simply label Baker as a crank and ignore
him. Although the Archives and Archivists listserv is no clear barometer
of the archival profession, it is possible to detect in the early reception
of the book that this may be exactly what some archivists want to do.
Posters to the list suggested that Baker lives in a "dream world," that
he is a "shrill advocate," or, worse, that he is a "joke," and that he
has "found a franchise—bashing libraries." Other posters suggested,
more prudently, that the book will raise questions for us and that Baker
raises many good questions. We may be facing an opportunity to
take our cases into the public forum in a way we have not had for years.
Archivists and librarians can't afford to get dismissive or condescending
of the paper prophet that has arisen in their midst. Baker already has
his followers—all those people glued to the television every week
watching Antiques Road Show or submitting their bids on eBay (I
plead guilty to both activities, although perhaps with less zealousness
than others).
Responding
to Baker
We need
to respond carefully to the many levels of Baker's arguments, and his
arguments are complex and comprehensive. Throughout Double Fold,
Baker urges caution. In one encounter with a preservation administrator,
who argues that they needed to do something, Baker says that "when trying
does far more harm than not trying, don't try. Go slow. Keep what you
have" (p. 260). Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to call a moratorium
on the major reformatting projects for a brief period so we can discuss
these issues, do some study, and consider all the options. At the
least, why not divert some of the millions of federal and foundation funding
to study some of the kinds of questions Baker has raised. We need experts
(perhaps not the ones so openly criticized in Double Fold) to consider
the following matters:
Re-evaluating
the Original Analyses of the Condition of Paper. Baker raises
many questions about how pioneers like Barrow, Clapp, and others assessed
the condition of paper, its potential deterioration, and, especially,
the extent of the exaggeration of the claims for brittle paper crumbling
into dust. Baker provides a lot of anecdotal evidence (mostly from his
own personal experience and observation), some of it quite compelling,
but we need to examine in analytical, if not scientific, fashion the extent
of deterioration of paper. Hyperbole on both sides of the debate will
not resolve this issue. While it appears that the proponents of reformatting
books and newspapers may have overstated their case, it is also possible
that Baker has overstated his (I certainly believe he has). Preserving
original newspapers across the world does seem excessive, unless undertaken
as a very selective exercise.
Factoring
in the Needs of Users and the Preservation of Our Documentary Heritage.
Throughout Double Fold Baker pulls out examples of people complaining
about having to use microfilm, not having access to original books and
newspapers, or the loss of information when the book or newspaper as artifact
is ignored. However, we really do not know the actual impact of either
microfilm or digitization on scholarship and the providing of information
in general to genealogists, amateur historians, hobbyists, journalists,
citizens groups, and the public. I have talked to archivists who tell
me of patrons complaining about having to use original newspapers, so
I (and others) can also compile such anecdotal evidence on the other side
of the argument as well. That we do not know the nature of use is, of
course, another criticism that could be weighed in support of Baker. It
does seem that the marketing in support of brittle books and other such
efforts preceded extensive fact gathering, although those that built the
campaign were certainly well-intentioned and committed to rectifying or
retarding the potential loss of our documentary heritage. On the other
hand, what is the evidence to suggest that microfilming complete runs
of newspapers did in fact enhance scholarship and research more broadly
defined? Will we compile, effectively, the evidence about the use of digital
materials on the World Wide Web?
Redefining
the Education of Librarians, Archivists, and Preservation Administrators. A
minor theme in Baker's book, although no less emotional or intense, is
the role of education in the crisis he is describing. Baker muses over
the fact that the book conservator, the one most likely to save the original
artifact, must go through a "slow apprenticeship" while the preservation
administrator, the one making those reformatting decisions, "needs but
an extra year of library-science courses to earn the right to decide,
or help decide, what to do with a stackful of artifacts about which he
or she might know almost nothing" (p. 108). At another point, Baker asserts
that "there is a direct correlation between the spread of preservation
administration as a career and the widening toll in old books" (p. 212).
Well, enough said, we need to rethink education. However, most of us
have
operated on a different level regarding preservation, assuming the main
problem was that there were too few trained preservation administrators
out there in the first place (except, remember, Baker simply believes
you can put these books and newspapers on shelves and forget about them).
Of course, adopting Baker's argument that we should just leave the books
in the stacks and not bother with them suggests eliminating the education
that we already have in place. Someone needs to be educated, us or Baker
and, most certainly, the public and funders. I believe we have a major
educational venture before us, but not merely in retraining new kinds
of preservation administrators but in explaining to the public and policymakers
the nature of library and archival preservation.
Explaining
that We are in the Selecting not Warehousing Business. One of
the most referenced ideas in the early reviews of Baker's book is the
notion that all one needs is a large warehouse, like a Home Depot, to
store everything (microfilmed, digitized, or just left alone). I shop
at Home Depot, and it seems like a pretty simplistic notion. They are
big but not big enough, they are not environmentally stable, they lack
the amenities needed for staff and researchers, and they are trying to
move a lot of goods out as fast as possible for a large profit. Libraries
and archives are not warehouses, they are repositories for holding
research and other collections that have been carefully evaluated for
possessing some continuing documentary value. Librarians call it collection
development and archivists term this function appraisal, but whatever
it is called the process suggests that we cannot save everything not
just
because there is too much (there is) but because only a portion possesses
value sufficient for justifying the costs for maintaining the materials.
The premise that newspapers will be kept in original form seems to resolve
effectively that some newspapers require special care (because of intrinsic
value—a concept Baker ridicules [p. 224]), but every issue
of every newspaper? Newspapers should be saved (in original format)
when they have certain physical characteristics that cannot be captured
well by reformatting, when they reflect breakthroughs in certain technological
advances and changes, when there are landmark shifts in design, or when
they represent certain unique social characteristics. The history of the
modern newspaper is towards a rapidly disseminating news source mass-produced
for expeditious use and resulting in a fairly ephemeral product, something
Baker seems to be unwilling to address. He is also uninterested in the
records of newspaper publishers, which are certainly equally important
for understanding what these newspapers represent.
Re-evaluating
the Costs Associated with Preservation and Reformatting. Double Fold
dotes on costs of microfilming, digitizing, and storing originals. Baker
reads our literature and reports back many of the doubts and concerns
raised by librarians and preservation administrators and others about
how to calculate or justify the costs of reformatting. What is missing,
of course, is any sense on Baker's part of how preservation fits into
all the other responsibilities and functions of libraries and archives,
especially the comprehension that there are many demands pushing librarians
and archivists that compete for financial, staff, and intellectual resources.
It is imperative, I believe, that we respond to these monetary criticisms,
but that we also do so in a way that indicates that preservation is expensive
and that preservation that assumes the maintenance of all originals is
expensive beyond our (or Baker's) wildest dreams.
Final
Thoughts
Now I have
not specifically addressed Baker's own recommendations—publishing
discard lists "so that the public has some way of determining which of
them are acting responsibly on behalf of their collectors," having the
Library of Congress "lease or build a large building" for holding everything,
persuading "several libraries around the country" to "begin to save the
country's current newspaper output in bound form," and see that the U.S.
Newspaper Program and the Brittle Book Program are abolished or require
that "all microfilming and digital scanning be nondestructive" and "all
originals be saved afterward" (p. 270). I have no problems with including
these recommendations into a list of issues for study, but I believe
that
some more fundamental matters need to be considered first. Baker believes
that all originals must be saved, but I do not believe this necessarily
follows or is possible.
What all
this leads up to is the need to use the same standards for evaluating
Baker's book that he himself employs to evaluate preservation efforts
of the past half century. Baker critiques the early 1990s film Slow
Fires in this fashion: "It would be a better film if what it was saying
happened to be truth and not head-slapping exaggeration—then its
use of crisis language . . . would have some justification" (pp. 186-187).
The same applies, of course, to determining just how exaggerated Double
Fold may be. Certainly Baker thinks a "crisis" also exists. I think
the exaggeration comes in Baker's characterization of some individuals
and the more conspiratorial aspects of his arguments. The truth rests
somewhere in his arguments about the massive microfilming and digitization
of books that may not be as endangered as we were led to believe. Other
problems stem from Baker's blinders to examine only this aspect of libraries
(and archives), ignoring their other responsibilities, now including
what
they will do with e-journals, e-books, and the information and evidence
resting on the ever-changing World Wide Web.
Despite
whatever problems or weaknesses exist in Double Fold, librarians,
archivists, and preservation administrators better read it carefully.
The book is receiving favorable reviews, drawing lots of attention, and
this will undoubtedly lead some archivists and librarians to start getting
some hard questions about what they are doing. Despite whatever one's
personal reactions may be to the book, we all need to take it very seriously.
Richard
J. Cox is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information
Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in library science and an M.A. in history.
The author of numerous articles, technical reports, and books, he was
named a fellow of the Society of American Archivists in 1989.
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