Nicholson Baker. Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. New York: Random House, 2001. xii + 370 pp. $25.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-375-50444-0.

Reviewed by Mark Lambert (Special Collections and Government Documents Librarian, Fred Parks Law Library, South Texas College of Law, Houston, Texas)
Published on H-Law (June, 2001)

Double Fold: Double Trouble

Double Fold: Double Trouble

It would be easy to dismiss Nicholson Baker's new book Double Fold as a polemic, the conspiratorial rantings of a cranky novelist who knows nothing about his subject. In fact, some in the library community have raised their heads from the sand long enough to blurt out things like "he just doesn^Òt understand."[1] Baker's heavy use of exaggeration, hyperbole, and half-truths about the "barbarians inside the gate" wound his argument. His shrill rhetoric and mean-spirited caricatures of some of the library profession's most respected members over the last fifty years are also unneeded and offensive. Included as one of the targets of Baker^Òs harangue is the respected historian Daniel J. Boorstin as the prone-to-exaggerating Librarian of Congress in the 1970s and 1980s (p. 126).

However, to tell his side of the story Baker has mastered an enormous amount of information regarding preservation, conservation, and papermaking, and there is more than a kernel of truth in this book. Baker presents a laundry list of hare-brained schemes based on fuzzy science that the Library of Congress and other major research libraries in the United States have foisted on the collections in their possession over the last fifty years, without more than a voice or two objecting to the schemes. Unfortunately, his book's distortions, half-truths, and mischaracterizations are so offensive to many cultural resource professionals and scholars, that his partially meritorious message get lost in the controversy. With all of this in mind, this book is doubly troubling, not only because Baker gets so much wrong, but also because he gets some of it right.

In fairness, Baker is upfront about his zealousness, as he states in his preface: "This isn^Òt an impartial piece of reporting" (p. x). For the uninitiated, Nicholson Baker is a novelist, whose books, such as Vox (1992) and Fermata (1994), are known for their microscopic focus and quirky delivery of racy subjects.[2] Vox, with its theme of phone sex, became notorious as Monica Lewinsky's gift to President Clinton. Baker has also written two non-fiction works, collections of his articles from such publications as the New Yorker and the Atlantic.

Librarians are already familiar with Baker as the man who turned his obsession with detail to the subject of card catalogs in libraries in 1994 and again in 1996 at the grand opening of the new San Francisco Public Library. Baker's 1994 New Yorker article decried the loss of paper card catalogs and the move to electronic catalogs; because, Baker stated, some cards over the years had been hand-annotated, important information in those notes was now lost.[3] In this instance, Baker was among the minority of people who felt that increased access to materials through the use of computers was not worth the loss of paper catalogs. In 1996, Baker gave a speech critical of the San Francisco Public Library after staff members secretly informed him that the library had discarded 200,000 volumes as part of their move into a new building. Baker was not convinced by the library administration's explanation that this "weeding" was part of a systematic process performed by professionals. Baker termed it a destruction of the printed word hastily begun when library administrators realized that their goal of a mostly electronic library had caused them to allocate less shelf-space in the new library than they presently needed, thus requiring the thinning of the book collection.[4]

In Double Fold, Baker tells us that over the last fifty years, the Library of Congress and other major American research libraries have expended millions of dollars, and have destroyed enormous amounts of valuable books and newspapers, in error, by microfilming and then destroying the original items. The main causes were two-fold: first, librarians were seduced by the "high-tech" appeal of microfilm, and its promises of space savings; and later in the erroneous belief, or deceptive ploy, that books and newspapers defined as "brittle," were in imminent danger of self-destructing. Thousands of books and newspapers were microfilmed and then discarded because they were called brittle. Baker even pillories the brittle book test itself, known as the double fold test, as a piece of pseudoscience cooked up by librarians to excite a call to action in the name of preservation (p. 147). The double-fold test, as Baker describes in Chapter 17 (pp. 152-157), was first developed by William J. Barrow, a former clothes-factory foreman (p. 112), who ended up working as a conservator at the Virginia State Library in the 1930s (p. 148).

The main theme of Baker^Òs book is that all the money the Library of Congress and other major research libraries in the United States have spent in the last fifty years to microfilm (and then throw away) original items, could have been better spent on building warehouses to house the discarded originals (pp. 136-140). Since the 1980s, several major research libraries in the United States, including Harvard and the University of Texas, have in fact begun creating these book "warehouses." Little-used books and other materials worthy of retention are sent to "remote" or "off-site" storage, where the texts are stored densely, sometimes in boxes or by size, in shelving potentially many stories high. These materials can be recalled for researchers in as little as a day^Òs notice, by way of sophisticated databases that have stored the texts' bibliographic information and location quickly by the use of barcoding. [5]

I. Butchers and Bakers

Not even these huge warehouses, however, could satisfy Baker, and this is part of the problem with Baker^Òs book. To Baker, every edition of every issue of every newspaper ever produced is worthy of permanent retention (pp. 47-50). Only in a perfect world would this be possible. In reality, newspapers are just one item out of many in the information universe that librarians must manage. In this imperfect world, and its glut of information, some resources receive more attention than others. For major newspapers, one edition is traditionally microfilmed, whether it be the ^Ómorning edition,^Ô the ^Ólate edition,^Ô etc. As Baker has identified, sometimes breaking news has not been preserved for posterity because the "wrong" edition was the one preserved on microfilm.

Baker begins his manifesto in chapter one by denoucing the British Library, which in 1999 sold off most of its collection of American newspapers due to growing space concerns (p. 10). Baker was so troubled by the thought of the sale that he begged for the newspapers to be given to him (p. 264). In his zeal, he apparently believed that the money that was to be raised from the sale was of no need to the British Library. He also thought nothing of attempting to stop the auction at the last minute even though it had been announced months in advance, and had been of great interest to many during the pre-auction viewing. When this approach didn^Òt work, Baker then formed a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository, and attempted to purchase what he could. He did this so that the newspapers would not be destroyed, or fall into dealer^Òs hands, who would then sell them off one by one at great profit as mementos of birthdays or as framed product advertisements of yesteryear (p. 267). In the end, Baker's non-profit organization purchased approximately 6,400 bound volumes of American newspapers, partially (we are told) with his own retirement savings. The newspapers now sit in a warehouse in New Hampshire, where supposedly Baker provides library-type access to his stash for researchers (p. 268). What Baker has not realized, however, at great expense to the reputation of a worthy library, is that it was not and is not the primary duty of the British Library to preserve American history. That is the duty of American cultural resource collectors. The British library is not the villain that Baker attempts to make of it (pp. 10-11).

A large problem with Baker's view of the printed word, however, is his image of all books and newspapers as artifacts. To Baker, every book and every newspaper ever produced deserve to be preserved in its original format, regardless of its merit (p. 224). In fact, Baker^Òs reverence for newspapers is partially misplaced. Newspapers are ephemeral, produced for the moment, and can contain fact errors or distortions of the truth. Only a minority of people requires viewing newspapers in their original format to gain something from the encounter. For most people, the information is the only goal. Microfilm, when properly done, can preserve in a small amount of space a medium that is a space gobbler in the original. Microfilm can also greatly increase the access to an important source. It is no accident that scholarship has increased in the United States, as has the use of microfilm.[6] Baker barely acknowledges this important fact (p. 256). In fact, Baker's view of libraries is more akin to museums of bound materials, untouched probably except by a few worthy individuals. In this scenario, Baker might fall into the category of the "unworthy," as whatever justification a fiction writer would have to use old books or newspapers would surely rank low on a repository^Òs scale.

Baker also envisions everyone else treating bound newspapers with the reverence he reserves for them. Experience dictates this is not the case. They are leaned on, scribbled atop, brutalized and smashed under photocopier lids, and the pages torn while turned. They are usually treated just like any other information resource. Ideally, each library would house the newspapers it holds in two formats--one, the bound edition, in a special collections department, where it would sit protected until needed by the researcher of printing history or journalism, and the other, the microfilmed copy, available to the majority. But in the library world of limited resources, someone might complain about this duplication of precious resources.

Baker is partly right in one regard. The preservation of newspapers has been slighted when compared to other information resources over the last fifty years. Rare or one-of-a-kind materials (such as rare books, archives, or manuscripts) usually receive the lion's share of attention by preservation administrators and conservators. However, preservation and retention decisions are never made willy-nilly (as Baker assumes), but as part of a decisional process involving the appraisal of all available information resources. The entire universe of information resources are weighed as to which deserve preservation in their original format, which resources can be preserved in alternate formats, and which will eventually be destroyed. These decisions are made daily by information professionals, in light of budgetary and other concerns, where there are infinite needs and finite resources. These are factors that Baker doesn't want to acknowledge or fails to understand, all the while hinting that someone else, perhaps himself, could better make these important decisions.

Baker also lumps newspapers and books together. They are not the same. Books, especially those found in research libraries, are not produced overnight and only intended for the moment, as are newspapers. Scholarly books are assembled over months or years, and professionals and experts in their field critically review most before and after they are produced. Any book on the shelf in a research library probably went through rigorous scrutiny to get there.

The Library of Congress also receives a lot of criticism in Baker's book, some of it deserved, most not. The Library of Congress was the leader in many of the projects that he discusses. It is important to note how in many different forms, Baker repeatedly refers to the Library of Congress as our national library.[7] American librarians only wish it were the case. Depending on the Presidential Administration and Congress, our leaders in Washington allocate enough money for the Library of Congress to be our National Library, or grudgingly allocate it to be the Library for Congress, and Congress only. A look at the Strategic Priorities of the Library of Congress hints at this problem, as the first priority listed is "to make knowledge and creativity available to the United States Congress." Listed second in priority is "to acquire, preserve, secure and sustain for the present and future use of the Congress and the nation^Å"[8] Lack of money was a motivator in many of the Library of Congress's schemes.

The biggest problem with Baker^Òs book, however, is his long discussion of research libraries' concerns over space, or lack of it (pp. 104-105). Never anywhere in the book is space equated with money. Most of the time they were probably one and the same. Decisions whether to film a book or repair it, or to film and to retain the film and the book, were probably never made by libraries in isolation, but always had as the underlying goal the efficient use of, or savings of institutional money.

II. Baker's Doozies

Baker is right in condemning librarians in the past for not introducing and leading a national discussion on the important issue of preserving library materials as cultural heritage objects. Librarians also could have attempted to shift the money flow to such unsexy projects as conservation and increased storage space. Librarians are also at fault for microfilming and then destroying newspapers without first checking to see if the film accurately reflected the contents of the original newspaper. Baker gives many accounts of microfilm holdings with incomplete runs of newspapers (the originals having been discarded) (pp. 51-52). Librarians were too easily lured by the post-World War II "spy-tech" technology of microfilming, and its promises of space savings. Later, there were genuine space concerns in research libraries in the 1970s, along with flat budgets, and just as there was money to continue to purchase materials, there was little or no money for capital improvement projects to build new buildings. Libraries were looking for ways to stretch their dollars.[9] Many fell prey to potential quick fixes such as clearing shelf space by microfilming and discarding.

Baker rightly denounces the microfilming of books and then the destruction of the book, as well as the brittle-book or "double-fold" test itself (pp. 152-157). Books were not "turning to dust" on library shelves (pp. 194-195). Book paper will yellow for a variety of reasons, and become brittle as it ages due to residual acid from the modern papermaking process. That does not make the volume useless (p. 12). A brittle book does require more careful use than a new book, since previously dog-eared corners of pages will detach almost by touch, and pages can tear out very easily. Most brittle books can easily last for a hundred years after they are discovered to be brittle (pp. 198-202). Books such as these are good candidates for rare book collections, or a halfway measure becoming increasingly more popular known as "medium-rare" or "semi-rare" collections, where the books are used only on-site. The "turning to dust" allusion, its crisis tone and proposed solution of microfilming, however, showed libraries in action rather than inaction, and was a great marketing ploy that ambitious library leaders used in the 1980s to gain greater funding for their budgets over competing interests (pp. 195-197). Baker reveals the double-fold test for the sham it is, and with crystal-clear logic proposes his own simple, more valid alternative to it (pp. 198-202). After reading Baker's easy repudiation, it seems amazing that any national library leader could still buy into the pseudoscience of the double-fold test.

Baker's book is at its best when painstakingly and sarcastically reporting the many different hare-brained schemes undertaken by librarians in the past in the name of preservation. A librarian's first credo, like a doctor's, should be "do no harm." As Baker reveals, this was sometimes not followed in the past.

Baker includes a discussion of document lamination, also developed by William J. Barrow and begun in the 1940s, during which manuscripts were sandwiched between two layers of plastic, which then were heated under a press, causing the plastic to bond with the paper fibers (pp. 148-150). Early plastics turned brown, or distorted the paper within. This process is almost impossible to reverse except by very costly conservation treatment, and does more harm than good, especially in the way it renders the feel of an early American document into something from the space age. This preservation technique finally went out of favor by the 1980s.

He also mentions diethyl zinc, or DEZ, a gas first used in the early 1980s for treating large amounts of books at one time to reduce their acidity. Unfortunately, treating books to limit their acidity cannot reverse the embrittlement of paper; so newer books that were not yet brittle were the unlucky subjects in this scheme. The highly explosive mixture of DEZ was fed into large high-pressure containers holding books, where it then permeated the books, and was later evacuated. This process, because of its danger, was required to be performed under scientific oversight. The Library of Congress never pointed out this fact in its optimistic press releases of the time, since it hoped to license the process and make money from it. After repeated testing, it was discovered that DEZ stained the books and produced other damage to bindings and paper. This idea was eventually dropped as unworkable in the early 1990s after tremendous expense to the Library of Congress (pp. 111-135).

He also discusses the library profession's reliance on accelerated aging tests for determining the lifespan of paper (p. 8). In an accelerated aging test, a sample of paper is baked in an oven at a specific temperature for a specific amount of time, and the chemist's Arrhenius equation is used to estimate the paper's lifespan in normal temperatures. Many scientists view this test with skepticism (p. 8).

The history of microfilming, long used by libraries, also reveals its inferiority to the simple bound book, or codex, for longevity. A technology developed during wartime (pp. 27-28), microfilming for library use began before World War II with cellulose nitrate as the film stock. Cellulose nitrate film was later discovered to become highly flammable as it aged and decayed, and had the potential to combust spontaneously. After enough blazing infernos, film stock for microfilming was switched to cellulose acetate, dubbed ^Ósafety film^Ô because it wouldn't spontaneously combust. It was later discovered that cellulose acetate film itself had the nasty habit of shrinking as it aged, rendering the image in the emulsion layer of the film unreadable (p. 41). Both of these film stocks probably still exist today in research library collections, thus making it possible that items long considered obtained or preserved are not stored properly or are now unusable. Since the 1980s, most microfilm stock has consisted of polyester, which is claimed will last for hundreds of years under ideal conditions. This knowledge comes from another version of the accelerated aging test, considered unreliable by many scientists. "Preservation Microfilming," around since the 1980s, uses the best resources and techniques available in every phase of a filming project, and in its early years also included filming and then discarding the original item. Baker barely mentions that in recent years most libraries have begun to film items and also retain to the original. (pp. 106-110)

In one of Baker's last chapters, he criticizes the new trend towards digitization of library materials (pp. 240-253). In describing the origins of digitization as an infant technology in the early 1990s, he relates how unsophisticated library leaders adopted digitization, and dropped microfilming, as the panacea for their collection storage and retrieval woes. More books and newspapers were then destroyed in the mad rush to go digital. Many of those items are no longer retrievable since the technology has changed so much since that time. As one of his final pleas, Baker voices his fear that the librarians' zeal for digitization will finish off the great book and newspaper collections still in our midst (pp. 246-248). He either does not know nor does not report that, since their early experiences with the technology, no preservation librarian or archivist now considers digitization a preservation format; indeed, they are now educating the rest of the library community on this important point. However, digitization is proving excellent for increasing access to materials through university networks or over the Internet.

III. Baker and Dough

Money has and will always be the crux of the matter in preserving cultural heritage resource collections. Two recently released reports, current budget shifts at the Smithsonian Institution, and the present fight over funding of the National Historical Publication and Records Commission, reveal it to be an ever-present, ongoing problem, even in a booming economy.

The NHPRC, part of the National Archives, is currently threatened with a budget reduction. [10] If our elected representatives in the federal government, historians, and cultural resource collectors cannot protect funding for preserving and making more accessible some of the crown jewels of American history (such as the publication of definitive editions of the papers of our Founding Fathers), it does not bode well for the lesser collections in our midst. The Smithsonian Institution has also recently announced budget cuts that would include closing their art and artifact conservation center, at a time when more solid scientific research of the type that Baker demands is needed.[11] Also, the report released by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, issued on April 23, 2001, highlights the poor state of historic and cultural resources managed by the Federal Government. These include historic properties, major public buildings, engineering works, and military installations of great value as public assets. The report states that great problems exist, including funding and staffing that are inadequate, a need for better accountability, and the need to remind public policy makers of the value of the 665 million acres of land and 430,000 buildings that the Federal Government owns, manages, or administers for the American people.[12]

Most important, The Evidence in Hand: the Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections,[13] the draft report just released by the Council on Library and Information Resources, one of the demon organizations in Double Fold, is an attempt by librarians to begin to address most of the issues that Baker has brought up in this book and his past writings concerning libraries. The Task Force was created in 1999, before the publication of Double Fold or his earlier article on the same subject.[14] The report highlights that there has never been enough preservation money to go around, and asks for help by scholars on how to prioritize the materials in libraries to best utilize preservation dollars. This draft report reveals Baker's influence, and comes across as somewhat defensive. Worse yet, the report repeats some of the alarmist and highly exaggerated stories of the past, of paper of the second half of the nineteenth century "highly embrittled and in danger of imminent disintegration," and books "that fall apart when used" and "eventually crumble when handled."

The CLIR report is valuable, however, in highlighting the many different formats that need preserving, including some that have largely been neglected in the past, such as audio- and videotape and film. The report can also be praised for noting the negative impact digitizing has had on preservation budgets in libraries. Library budgets do not usually increase for digitization projects, but drain money from other uses, such as preservation, conservation and storage. This is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Digitization can assist in a small way the long-term preservation of cultural resource materials, by allowing easy production of many copies. However, digitization is best at increasing access, through digital surrogates placed on school networks, the Internet or printed out on demand for users, so the original item can remain safe behind locked doors. Unfortunately, digital surrogates placed on the Internet also usually increase the demand for the use of the original item, thereby potentially causing more damage and shortening the life of the material.

IV. Baker's Wrap

Baker works with a broad brush in this volume, ignoring the financial realities in librarianship, implying conspiracies where there are none, and suggestively highlighting linkages between librarianship and the "military-industrial complex." Baker also zealously obsesses over only a small piece of the information universe, all the while painting librarians as the "Barney Fifes" of the information age.

Unfortunately, there is some truth in Baker's book. Books should never have been microfilmed and then discarded, and the various other library schemes mentioned are embarrassing in retrospect. There have been mistakes made in the past by the library profession, as librarians fell prey to quick fixes promised by technology or smooth talkers. This can happen in any profession. There is still no one better qualified to make the tough decisions involving the permanent retention of our recorded cultural heritage than librarians, aided by the valuable input of scholars.

Most important, Mr. Baker's book, and the recent CLIR report, have (we can hope) started a long overdue national discussion on the societal value (and monetary costs) of the long-term preservation of some of our country^Òs most important cultural resource materials.

NOTES

This review attempts to address issues other reviews of Baker^Òs book have neglected or glossed over. For other reviews of Double Fold, see the Nicholson Baker fan page <http://www.j-walk.com/nbaker/>; Barbara Quint, ^ÓSearcher^Òs Voice: Don^Òt Burn Books! Burn Librarians! A Review of Nicholson Baker^Òs Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper," Searcher, vol. 9, no. 6, June 2001, <http://infotoday.com/searcher/jun01/voice.htm>; the Association of Research Libraries response, ^ÓTalking Points in Response to Nicholson Baker,^Ô <http://www.arl.org/preserv/baker1.html>; Neil McAllister, ^ÓCan Digital Media Match the Longevity of Plain Old Print?^Ô <http://www.sfgate.com>; Michiko Kakutani, ^ÓMicrofilm Gets a Black Eye >From a Friend of Paper,^Ô The New York Times, April 10, 2001; David Gates, ^ÓPaper Chase: Nicholson Baker makes a case for saving old books and newspapers,^Ô The New York Times, April 15, 2001; Robert Darnton, ^ÓThe Great Book Massacre,^Ô The New York Review of Books, April 26, 2001; Julian Dibbell, ^ÓThe Paper Chase,^Ô Village Voice Literary Supplement, April 2001; Michael Dirda, ^ÓDouble Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper by Nicholson Baker,^Ô The Washington Post, April 15, 2001; Barbara Fisher, ^ÓBook Review Short Takes: ^ÑDouble Fold^Ò by Nicholson Baker,^Ô The Boston Globe, April 22, 2001; Katherine A. Powers, ^ÓThe rage for destruction at libraries,^Ô The Boston Globe, April 22, 2001; Earl L. Daschslager, ^ÓFahrenheit 98.6: Scholar says librarians are destroying our printed heritage,^Ô The Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2001; two articles by Richard J. Cox, Professor of Archives and Records Management at the University of Pittsburgh School of Library of Information Sciences, for an archivist^Òs perspective: ^ÓThe Great Newspaper Caper: Backlash In he Digital Age,^Ô at <http://firstmonday.org>; ^ÓDon^Òt Fold Up: Responding to Nicholson Baker^Òs Double Fold,^Ô at the Society of American Archivists web site: <http://www.archivists.org/news/doublefold.html>; ^ÓLogging in With Nicholson Baker,^Ô The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 18, 2001, p. A40; and Alexander Star, ^ÓThe Paper Pusher,^Ô The New Republic Online, May 28, 2001, available at <http://www.tnr.com/052801/star052801_print.html>.

[1]. See Barbara Quint, ^ÓSearcher^Òs Voice: Don^Òt Burn Books! Burn Librarians! A Review of Nicholson Baker^Òs Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper,^Ô Searcher, vol. 9, no. 6, June 2001, available at: <http://infotoday.com/searcher/jun01/voice.htm>; and Association of Research Libraries, Talking Points in Response to Nicholson Baker^Òs Article in the 24 July New Yorker, available at <http://www.arl.org/preserv/baker1.html>.

[2]. Information about Baker can be found at a fan^Òs web site: <http://www.j-walk.com/nbaker/>

[3]. ^ÓDiscards,^Ô New Yorker, (4 April 1994), pp. 64-70+, reprinted in his The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber. (New York: Vintage Books, 1997): pp. 125-174.

[4]. The speech was later printed in the New Yorker, ^ÓThe Author vs. the Library,^Ô 14 October 1996, pp. 50-63, and in a San Francisco collection entitled ^ÓWeeds: A Talk at the Library,^Ô In Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, A City Light Anthology. Edited by James Brook, Chris Carlsson & Nancy J. Peters. (San Francisco: City Lights, 1998): pp. 35-50, with photographs.

[5]. Information on the Harvard Depository can be found at <http://hul.harvard.edu/hd/about-hd.html>. Information on the remote storage facility of the University of Texas at Austin General Libraries can be found in ^ÓOffsite Storage at UT Austin,^Ô The Abbey Newsletter, vol. 16, no. 7-8, December 1992, available at <http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey/an/an16/an16-7/an16-709.html>.

[6]. Richard D. Altick, The Art of Literary Research. (New York: Norton, 1963): pp. 140-141. I thank Professor Richard J. Cox for this citation.

[7]. A couple of examples: on p. 83, ^Óour library of last resort,^Ô and on p. 102, ^Óas the national library...^Ô

[8]. ^ÓThe Mission and Strategic Priorities of the Library of Congress, FY 1997-2004^Ô found at the Library of Congress web site, <http://www.loc.gov/ndl/mission.html>.

[9]. Although I was unable quickly to place my hands (browser) on library funding statistics all the way back to the 1970s to prove what I know anecdotally to be true, a few documents found on the Internet mention the lack of funding for libraries during that time. A history of the Library of Congress, found at <http://www.loc.gov/loc/legacy/loc.html>, describes the ^Ófiscal retrenchments of the 1970s.^Ô A research paper found at the Association of College and Research Libraries web site <http://www.ala.org/acrl/pil/osburn.html> by Charles B. Osburn, Dean of Libraries at the University of Alabama, entitled ^ÓOne Purpose: The Research University and Its Library,^Ô mentions the shrinking amount of money available in the 1970s for post-secondary education when compared to other national issues. Also, a research paper digest from ERIC entitled ^ÓLibrary Funding,^Ô found at <http://www.ericit.org/digests/EDO-1R2001-01>, mentions ^Ólibrary budgets suffering major setbacks in the 1970s.^Ô

[10]. See the NCC Washington Update, vol. 7, no. 17, April 25, 2001, available on H-Law and H-Net, and subsequent issues of the Update, for details of this debate. At last report (the issue of May 11, 2001), Congress had attempted to fund the NHPRC at a higher level than the President^Òs request of a 31% budget cut, and may in the end obtain for the department a budget increase.

[11]. See Elaine Scolino, ^ÓSmithsonian^Òs Board Votes to Shut Artifact Preservation Center,^Ô The New York Times, May 8, 2001, accessible on the web at <http://nytimes.com>.

[12]. ^ÓCaring for the Past, Managing for the Future: Federal Stewardship and America^Òs Historic Legacy,^Ô is available at <http://www.achp.gov/stewsum.html>.

[13]. Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections, The Evidence in Hand: the Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections. DRAFT. Council on Library and Information Resources, May 2001, available at <http://www.clir.org>.

[14]. Nicholson Baker, ^ÓDeadline: The Author^Òs Desperate Bid to Save America^Òs Past,^Ô The New Yorker, July 24, 2000, pp. 42-61.

Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

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Citation: Mark Lambert. Review of Baker, Nicholson, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. June, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5224

Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.