| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
xii, 370 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm |
|
Newspapers language |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-353) and index. |
| Contents |
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. |
| Summary |
"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."--BOOK JACKET. |
| Awards |
National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, 2001. |
| Subject |
Libraries -- United States -- Special collections -- Newspapers.
|
|
Libraries. |
|
United States. |
|
Newspaper and periodical libraries -- United States.
|
|
Newspaper and periodical libraries. |
|
Newspapers -- Conservation and restoration.
|
|
Newspapers -- Conservation and restoration. |
|
Paper -- Preservation -- United States.
|
|
Paper -- Preservation. |
| Other Form: |
Online version: Baker, Nicholson. Double fold. 1st ed. New York : Random House, 2001 (OCoLC)606589578 |
| ISBN |
0375504443 alkaline paper |
|
9780375504440 alkaline paper |
|
