Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. - book review

Contemporary Review, August, 2002

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. Nicholson Baker. Vintage. [pounds sterling]7.99 p.b. 370 pages. ISBN 0-099-42903-9. Any library reader who has had to cope with the horrors of microfilm will be attracted to this 'Vintage Original' which was first published in the U.S. The author, himself a writer, was horrified to learn how passionately great libraries in the U.S.

and in Britain were getting rid of their long newspaper 'runs'. Librarians argue that the papers are turning to dust and that only microfilms last. He shows that the opposite is the case: papers will survive if properly stored and microfilms do not last forever. The real reason for the policy of wholesale destruction is the need to use the space taken by papers for other purposes. In his crusade to save papers the author met those who set themselves up as voluntary archivists and, at one stage, he himself came to the rescue of papers doomed to destruction. The offenders include not just university or civic libraries but the British L ibrary and the Library of Congress. This is a passionately argued case that exposes a less than pleasant state of affairs. (V.R.)