Disintegrating into Dust   

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper

By Nicholson Baker
Random House
384 pages; $24.95

It seems remarkable how often, in reporting, one curious little thing leads to another, and the next thing you know you're chasing a big story.

That is what happened to novelist Nicholson Baker, who set out to write a cheerful New Yorker piece about library card catalogs. His good cheer soured when he learned that libraries were throwing out the old catalogs, and it curdled when he discovered they also were systematically trashing books and old newspapers.

Enraged, Baker retaliated. Liquidating his own retirement account, he created a nonprofit corporation to rescue old newspapers, which libraries were auctioning off or sometimes just destroying. Then he wrote this book, which should be read by every print-lover alive.

You could call "Double Fold" an investigative tirade. "This isn't an impartial piece of reporting," Baker concedes. Indeed, it is an impassioned, sometimes over-the-top assault on what many libraries are doing and an unashamed panegyric to ink on pulp.

It is also devastatingly convincing.

The situation is simple. Many librarians contend that newspapers, especially those printed in the era before acid-free paper, take up excessive space and eventually crumble beyond usefulness. So at top institutions, including the Library of Congress and the British Library, microfilm rules. The volumes of old newspapers have been routinely cut apart, flattened and filmed, and the original papers tossed out.

Baker reports that original sets of many historic newspapers simply no longer exist. Not even the newspapers themselves keep them. And the microfilm is alarmingly subject to fading, blemishes and fatal imperfections.

"All the major newspaper repositories...have long since bet the farm on film and given away, sold, or thrown out most of their original volumes published after 1880 or so," Baker writes.

The upshot, as he sees it, is that "the annihilation of once accessible collections of major daily papers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is pretty close to total.... This country has strip-mined a hundred and twenty years of its history."

Baker's book sometimes takes on a harsh attack tone, complaining about the "guillotinage" of books, whose spines are sliced to facilitate microfilming, and branding those who favor microfilm as "indiscriminate spine-shearers." It never satisfactorily explains why librarians, who seem by nature word-loving good people all around, would succumb to this "print-purgation" fever.

Baker does grant that the rush to throw out old books has abated in recent years. The British Library last fall temporarily suspended its policy of disposing of old newspapers.

But Baker remains fearful, and he powerfully disputes three central points.

First, he insists that properly preserved newspapers do not deteriorate into dust.

Large bound volumes, he says, squeeze out air and protect the papers. He acknowledges that paper becomes brittle but cites several examples of aged texts that remain easily readable. Baker particularly bristles at the way some libraries judge brittleness by using the "double fold" test, which gives his book its title. A book's page is folded and creased several times until it breaks; the quicker this happens, the more brittle the book. But, Baker points out, most people don't read books or newspapers by folding and creasing the pages; they simply turn them, and even very old texts can be safely handled in this way.

Second, he claims that the so-called shelf crisis is bogus. "Compared to storing the originals in some big building," he writes, "microfilming is (like digitization) wildly expensive...it costs over a hundred and fifty dollars per volume...versus less than five dollars a volume to build outlying storage."

Finally, Baker inventories the downside of microfilm, which, not unlike paper, can deteriorate over time and with exposure to light. It is vulnerable to blurring, shrinking, buckling, spotting and, especially, fading. Because texts generally are cut apart for filming, the originals are destroyed, leaving no backup.

I saw these problems firsthand during several weeks of reading Library of Congress microfilm for an AJR project. Many newspaper pages were faded beyond readability. Others were mysteriously skipped in filming. Film of some Sunday papers included ads, inserts and magazines, but others did not.

Microfilm is handy and valuable, but it is emphatically not the real thing, or even a fully suitable substitute.

The overriding issue becomes: Are original newspapers worth keeping?

Here, I side with Baker's romanticized view of our "majestic, pulp-begotten ancestral stockpile."

Newspapers are living originals. They have a unique tactile intimacy, an exotic scent, a singular drawing-power keyed as much to their shape and feel as to their content. They are tangible artifacts, with innate historical and literary value. Neither microfilm nor digitization, for all their archival benefits, can re-create the bond of touch to text.

The house where I grew up sat a couple of lots away from the local weekly. From my bedroom, I would watch as newspapers rumbled off the monstrous old flatbed press. I could see, hear and even smell them. They blazed with a special sensuous appeal.

For one who loves print, reading a newspaper online is about as satisfying as viewing digital images of your children and grandchildren sent via the Internet. They are lovely to look at, and a deeply appreciated gift from technology. But virtual viewing simply cannot approach the experience of cradling the little beauties in your own arms.

But enough nostalgia. Baker doesn't wallow. He doesn't suggest that every issue of every newspaper should be conserved in every library. He just wants every issue of every newspaper conserved somewhere. Surely, we can do that.