"Patrick Scheible" wrote in message
...
Mr. Baker's book is specifically about newspapers and their
replacement by microfilm. What makes it a fantasy is his belief that
newsprint can be bound into volumes that will last for a few hundred
years. I've seen some of those volumes, mostly gifts from other
institutions or individuals. To start with, most newspapers print
right up to the gutter edge of the paper so there's no room to sew a
binding and still be able to read the first word of every line. But
more seriously than that, newsprint doesn't last that long. It's made
to be used and thrown away. With care it might last 50-75 years. If
people use it a lot, it would last less time than that -- but if you
don't let people use it, why is it taking up space in your library?
(1) The genesis of Baker's book was his interest in newspapers. But the
book is about much more--as I recall from my reading 2 years ago, probably
as much, if not more, about books as about newspapers.
(2) One of those other topics, e.g., is a chapter on the chemical
deacidification experiments that were conducted in the early 1990s. I saw
with my own eyes (and smelled with my own nose) the fabulous failure of
those experiments as the books that JHU's M.S. Eisenhower Library sent out
came back burned and unusable. I have never seen anyone dispute this
chapter of DOUBLE FOLD.
(3) I don't think Baker anywhere says that there shouldn't be microfilming.
He does focus on its failures, without perhaps highlighting its many
benefits. What he does say, though, which I think is beyond dispute, is
that the microfilming of a given title ought not to be a license to disgard
ALL the originals of that work--again, as I recall, he gives some examples
of exactly that sad event happening.
(4) As for the durability of newspaper, it can certainly last longer than 75
years. I have in my collection of early Catholic Americana 30 issues from
1833 of THE JESUIT, the first Catholic newspaper in the U.S., a weekly
published in Boston, which continues today as the Boston PILOT:
http://www.rcab.org/pilot.html
You can view beautifully preserved newspapers older than 75 years at Baker's
American Newspaper Repository:
http://home.gwi.net/~dnb/gallery.htm
William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com