Double Fold
Book description
The ostensible purpose of a library is to preserve the printed word. But for fifty years our country’s libraries–including the Library of Congress–have been doing just the opposite, destroying hundreds of thousands of historic newspapers and replacing them with microfilm copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Double Fold as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I love this utterly unexpected book for its deadpan humor, animated prose, and strange and wondrous facts about the horror-filled history of libraries and the humans who run these book depositories. That CIA-trained librarians, a mere few decades ago, guillotined newspapers and books in the worship of microfilm is an incredibly painful truth in today’s digital age.
Baker’s outrage is palpable, and yet he made me laugh out loud on almost every nerdy page. I’m jealous of his way of speaking. I put this one on syllabi whenever I can.
From Janine's list on books, for readers who like the smell of paper.
How do we decide what is kept? Every librarian will spend some part of their lives ‘weeding’ items from their collections: a necessary and important task. In this book, Nicholson Baker chronicles, with increasing agitation, what happens when de-accessioning gets out of control, and little foresight is given to weeding. Written from the perspective of a journalist uncovering a major hushed-up conspiracy, Double Fold demonstrates how (mostly American) libraries destroyed much of their historic newspaper stock during the twentieth century, throwing them out in favor of a new and fancy (but now largely obsolete) technology, the microfilm. The book made…
From Arthur's list on the history of the library.
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