Double Fold - Reactions

Reactions

Librarians were quick to defend themselves and their profession, in journal articles and elsewhere, against Baker's accusations. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) maintains a web page, Nicholson Baker, Reviews and Responses that compiles Letters to the Editor, Reviews of Double Fold, Interviews, and Articles in response to Baker’s arguments, including a Q and A in response to the book, with questions such as "How accurate are Baker's claims about the durability of paper?" (answer: it depends) and "Should libraries collect and save everything published?" (answer: a fairly resounding "no"). In a Letter to the Editor in the New York Review of Books, Shirley K. Baker, a librarian writing on behalf of ARL, stresses that preservation decisions occur in a larger institutional context, and are concerned with more than just microfilm. She writes that "Despite limited budgets, the uncertainties of new technology, and other compelling institutional priorities, librarians have used the best knowledge and materials available at any given time to develop a broad array of preservation strategies."

In an editorial titled "Baker's Book Is Half-Baked," published in the May 15, 2001 issue of Library Journal, Francine Fialkoff starts by stating "Nicholson Baker doesn't get it" and goes on to say that Baker ignores the fact that libraries serve people, not products: "However admirable his effort to preserve newspapers and books and to ensure that original copies of every publication be retained, he doesn't understand -- and perhaps never will -- that the purpose of libraries is access."

A month later, in the June 1, 2001 issue of Library Journal, Baker got the chance to respond to librarians in an interview with writer Andrew Richard Albanese. In the interview Baker denies charges of "librarian bashing" and points out that some reviewers of Double Fold had misrepresented his opinions. He says that librarians may be reading these misguided reviews and taking offense without having read the book itself.

• "...I do think there have been some librarians who had a different idea of the direction libraries should go. Patricia Battin is one example. In my opinion, she hugely inflated a crisis in order to extract what was essentially disaster relief money from Congress. I don't think she acted with ill intentions, it's just that what she wanted to do resulted in the destruction of things libraries ought to be hanging onto...there were people who acted irresponsibly because they were caught up in the excitement of revolutionizing the distribution of information. And as a result things that we can never get back were destroyed." (p. 103)

• "I wanted to change the way librarians think about some of these collections and the nature of keeping things. I wanted to get the truth on the page so people could begin discussing these issues in an intelligent way. We have to learn what actually happened to these collections, so I wanted to tell the story in great detail of who did what and why. Having told that story, I would like librarians around the country to take seriously what's on their shelves." (p. 104)

• "There's an awful lot of stuff in this book. It is not the kind of fierce attack that it is being portrayed to be by the people who want to defuse it. There is a beleaguered feeling among librarians because people are assuming I'm saying things I'm actually not saying...I'm just trying to tell the history of some mistakes that we ought to be able to learn from as we go into this major phase of digital scanning." (p. 104)

• "There is nothing wrong with taking pictures of any library holding; it's what you do with the thing itself after you're done taking pictures that occupies my attention." (p. 104)

• "I really do love libraries. I want them to be funded. and I want them to have enough money to store what we want them to store and have the kind of invaluable reference services that they have offered in the past." (p. 104)

Later that year, Baker got another chance to respond to librarians when he was invited to speak at the annual American Library Association conference in San Francisco. He called himself a "library activist" and reiterated the need for libraries to retain last copies, as well as originals.

Richard Cox, a professor and archivist from the University of Pittsburgh, was sufficiently taken aback by Double Fold that he chose to respond with a book of his own. Vandals in the Stacks: A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries was published in 2002. In 2000, Cox published a critique of Double Fold called "The Great Newspaper Caper: Backlash in the Digital Age" that appeared in the internet journal First Monday. Both the article and the book provide harsh criticisms of Baker's research and findings. Cox admits that Baker is "well-meaning" and that some good could come from an elevation of the public discourse about preservation issues, but he also maintains that "the problems are much more complex than Mr. Baker understands or cares to discuss." He writes: "one can believe in the continuing utility of print and the value of maintaining books and some newspapers in their original condition, while recognizing that the ultimate preservation demands requires mechanisms like microfilming and digitization projects", and worries that Baker’s focus on original formats will "divert the public's attention from the greater issues facing the preservation of the books, documents, newspapers, and other artifacts of the past."

Marlene Manoff takes Baker to task by questioning the importance of such a claim. She writes: "What precisely is at stake here? Why have both the scholarly and popular press recently taken this sudden interest in libraries? Why this concern for the historical record? ... Because museums also exist to preserve our cultural heritage, they have been on the receiving end of similar kinds of invective. Museums, like libraries, are adapting to transformations in the larger culture. Mass audiences and corporate sponsorship have become their primary engines of growth and survival. Museums and libraries both are wrestling with the need to democratize and to expand their audiences and to find new sources of funding. Both are exploiting new technologies to transform their internal operations and the nature of the materials and services they provide." Manoff notes that "discarding books and newspapers, however serious a problem, is not itself the destruction of history" but also acknowledges that the call for libraries to take on a stronger role in preserving the historical record, and not only focus on technological trends, is a valid demand.