3. “Since the adoption”: Charles Z. Case, “Photographing Newspapers,” in Microphotography for Libraries, ed. M. Llewellyn Raney (Chicago: American Library Association, 1936), p. 53.
4. “Old wood-pulp files”: A. F. Kuhlman, “Are We Ready to Preserve Newspapers on Films? A Symposium,” Library Quarterly, April 1935, reprinted in Studies in Micropublishing, 1853–1976: Documentary Sources, ed. Allen B. Veaner (Westport, Conn.: Microform Review, 1976).
5. “total space requirements”: Keyes DeWitt Metcalf, “Some Trends in Research Libraries,” in William Warner Bishop: A Tribute, ed. Harry Miller Lydenberg and Andrew Keogh (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941).
6. “All that it is necessary”: New York Sun, June 1, 1837, quoted in Frank M. O’Brien, The Story of the Sun (New York: George H. Doran, 1918), p. 124.
7. brought prices way down: Alfred McClung Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America (New York: Macmillan, 1937), pp. 742–45.
8. interesting article: Detroit Evening News, January 10, 1892.
9. “the acidity of the paper alone”: Klaus B. Hendriks, “Permanence of Paper in Light of Six Centuries of Papermaking in Europe,” in Environnement et conservation de l’écrit, de l’image, et du son (Paris: Association pour la Recherche Scientifique sur les Arts Graphiques [ARSAG], 1994), p. 136. See also Otto Wächter, “Paper Strengthening: Mass Conservation of Unbound and Bound Newspapers,” Restaurator 8 (1987).
10. scientists have been making this observation: Sally Roggia cites Paper Makers Monthly Journal (June 1920), which summarizes a work by Aribert and Bouvier: the “most frequent and most harmful chemicals remaining in the paper are free acids and free chlorine”; it is “important to avoid acidity in the alum.” Sally Roggia, “William James Barrow: A Biographical Study of His Formative Years and His Role in the History of Library and Archives Conservation from 1931 to 1941,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999.
11. Wilson: William K. Wilson and E. J. Parks, “Comparison of Accelerated Aging of Book Papers in 1937 with 36 Years Natural Aging,” Restaurator 4 (1980): “Unfortunately the papers were accidentally discarded several years ago.” Elsewhere, Wilson and Parks write: “Very few organizations can maintain a project [such as testing naturally aging paper] that spans 25–50 years, especially when there is no pot of real gold at the end of the trail.” “Historical Survey of Research at the National Bureau of Standards on Materials for Archival Records,” Restaurator 5 (1983). In 1998, the American Society for Testing and Materials announced a one-hundred-year natural-aging experiment; books containing fifteen different kinds of test paper have gone into ten libraries in North America. The object is to develop an accelerated-aging test that better correlates with natural aging.
12. now viewed with skepticism: In Artificial Aging as a Predictor of Paper’s Future Useful Life, an Abbey Newsletter Monograph Supplement, Helmut Bansa and Hans-H. Hofer find that “there may be at best an accidental agreement between the results of artificial aging at high temperatures and natural aging” (Provo, Utah: Abbey Newsletter, 1989). See also Wilson and Parks, “Comparison of Accelerated Aging,” in which the data suggest that “either the number of samples is less than adequate to provide a valid statistical population or the accelerated aging method used in 1937 does not fully simulate natural aging, or both.” Later (p. 47) Wilson writes: “Don’t try to predict permanence in years.” E. Ströfer-Hua, after an experiment that demonstrated the flaws of oven aging, concludes: “History can only happen; it cannot be simulated in advance.” E. Ströfer-Hua, “Experimental Measurement: Interpreting Extrapolation and Prediction by Accelerated Aging,” Restaurator 11 (1990).
13. “an interesting academic exercise”: American Society for Testing and Materials, “Standard Test Method for Determination of Effect of Moist Heat (50% Relative Humidity and 90°C) on Properties of Paper and Board,” Annual Book of ASTM Standards, 1998, vol. 15.09, D 4714, Appendix (Conshohocken, Pa.: American Society for Testing and Materials, 1998).
14. “naive hope”: Tom Lindstrom, “Discussion Contribution: Slow Fires—It’s Paper Chemistry, Physics, and Biology,” in Paper Preservation: Current Issues and Recent Developments, ed. Philip Luner (Atlanta: Tappi, 1988). Glen G. Gray writes: “Although several accelerated-aging procedures or chemical specifications have been proposed, carefully controlled experiments and many years of natural aging would be required to verify predictions.” Glen G. Gray, “Determination and Significance of Activation Energy in Permanence Tests,” in Preservation of Paper and Textiles of Historic and Artistic Value, ed. John C. Williams (Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1977). Wilson and Parks write: “An accelerated aging test does not tell what a paper will be like after 25 or 50 years of storage. It only provides information concerning the ranking of different samples with respect to storage properties.” William K. Wilson and E. J. Parks, “An Analysis of the Aging of Paper,” Restaurator 3 (1979): 56.
15. newspaper library’s newsletter: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers,” Newspaper Library News 22 (winter 1996–1997).
16. wire-service story: Associated Press, “British Library Giving Away Old Newspapers,” January 29, 1997, Nexis.
17. library selected for discard: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers (Continued),” Newspaper Library News 24 (winter 1997–1998).
18. “overseas disposals project”: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers: Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the USA,” Newspaper Library News 25 (winter 1998–1999).
19. “Increasing pressure”: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers.”
20. “Material for which we cannot”: British Library Newspaper Library, “Disposal of Overseas Newspapers.”
CHAPTER 2 – Original Keepsakes
* * *
1. micro-madman: Herman H. Fussler’s early how-to book is Photographic Reproduction for Libraries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). Research libraries have been “duly grateful for the space saved through newspaper-salvaging operations,” he writes, in “Photographic Reproduction of Research Materials,” Library Trends, April 1954, reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing, p. 26. Fussler’s work at the Chicago branch of the Manhattan Project is briefly discussed in Burton W. Adkinson, Two Centuries of Federal Information (Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson, and Ross, 1978), pp. 42–43. See also Fussler’s obituary in the Chicago Tribune, March 7, 1997.
2. Shawn Godwin: Letter to author, July 30, 2000; Godwin would prefer that I not name the institution. Some years later, Godwin took a historical-research job in which he was supposed to make a catalog of the murals painted by two Hungarian-American artists. “Many of their murals had long been destroyed and the only documentary evidence, especially the only color evidence for them existed in a vertical file of real newspaper articles maintained by a major library. When the library moved into a new, much larger facility the vertical files were microfilmed in black and white and the originals destroyed according to apparently standard archival procedure. Fortunately on pain of death the reference librarian had previously allowed me to take the articles outside the building to a local copy shop to make color copies (the hoops I had to jump through to do this were in retrospect ironic given that the material was slated to be destroyed).”
3. U.S. Newspaper Program: See Robert P. Holley, “The Preservation Microfilming Aspects of the United States Newspaper Program: A Preliminary Study,” Microform Review 19:3 (summer 1990); and Larry E. Sullivan, “United States Newspaper Program: Progress and Prospects,” Microform Review 15:3 (summer 1986); Nancy E. Gwinn, “The Rise and Fall of Cooperative Projects,” Library Resources and Technical Services 29:1 (January/March 1985).
4. “part of the City’s own heritage”: Charles Longley, “Newspapers at the Boston Public Library,” t.s., March 13, 1998, p. 3. “The paper collection should not be discarded,” Longley writes, since “for many titles the Library has t
he only remaining original paper copy. As artifacts the original files provide a direct physical link with the past and are of interest as such.”
5. “original keepsake newspaper”: Hammacher Schlemmer, spring 1999 catalog (p. 58), late winter catalog (p. 17), etc.
6. its bookplates announce: The text is:
Gift of
MRS. OGDEN REID
(Helen Rogers Reid)
President,
NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, INC.
January 2, 1951
Not all the Tribune volumes are bookplated, however.
7. $39.50 an issue: If you buy from Hammacher Schlemmer, you receive the newspaper “set in a hand-bound, leatherette-covered binder that is gold-embossed with the publication title, date, and the recipient’s name,” but that costs $129.95.
CHAPTER 3 – Destroying to Preserve
* * *
1. They often do: Canadian libraries do a better job of keeping the originals as well: “With regard to the preservation of originals, the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec (BNQ) deserves special mention. Under the legal deposit regulation of its act, the BNQ receives two copies of every newspaper published in the province of Quebec. One copy is sent immediately to the conservation unit where it is filmed, and placed unfolded in an acid-free carton, in a climate-controlled storage area. Access to originals is strictly controlled.” Mary Jane Starr, “The Preservation of Canadian Newspapers,” Microform Review 15:3 (summer 1986).
2. “stock control”: See, for example, J. A. Urquhart and N. C. Urquhart, Relegation and Stock Control in Libraries (Stocksfield, Northumberland: Oriel Press, 1976), which discusses something called a “weedability factor,” defined as “the number of uses per working day per metre of shelving occupied.” Circulation statistics are all-important: “Intuitively, books which were last borrowed a long time ago seem ripe for relegation, books which were recently borrowed are left alone.”
3. “kissing through a pane of glass”: Quoted in Stephen R. Salmon, “User Resistance to Microforms in the Research Library,” Microform Review 3:3 (July 1974).
4. leave the bindings alone: “Poor binding also presents its own problems and although our cameras do cope well with tight binding we have unbound some volumes to allow filming to proceed.” John E. Lauder, “The Scottish Newspapers Microfilming Unit,” Microform Review 24:2 (spring 1995).
5. Historical Records Survey: Clifton Dale Foster, “Microfilming Activities of the Historical Records Survey, 1935–42,” American Archivist 48:1 (winter 1985). Foster writes that “the text of many filmed documents is almost illegible. One general complaint of those repositories housing copies of Historical Records Survey microfilm was that the film images are unreadable.” Luther Evans was a disciple of Robert C. Binkley, whose Manual on Methods of Reproducing Research Materials (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1931) influenced many. Binkley, who believed in microfilming newspapers and “letting the originals disappear” (Manual on Methods, p. 106), took an interest in the Historical Records Survey and “worked closely with Luther Evans in an advisory capacity and as a part-time field director in Ohio,” writes Foster. “During the first few months of the Survey’s existence, [Binkley] frequently urged Luther Evans to broaden the project’s scope to include microfilming. Evans, although hesitant at first, was eventually convinced and implemented many of Binkley’s suggestions.” The Historical Records Survey supplied the camera and the labor; the owning institution paid for the negatives: Luther Evans, “Recent Microfilming Activities of the Historical Records Survey,” Journal of Documentary Reproduction 2:1 (March 1939).
6. “The entire back of the binding”: Luther Evans, “Reference Department,” in Library of Congress, Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1941 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942), p. 133. Charles Case, at Recordak, led the way. “A rotary machine for photographing separate sheets is considerably more rapid than a machine for handling bound volumes. One machine can therefore turn out more work and so go further in its job of preserving evanescent material and saving valuable space than one machine of the other type. . . .The rotary machine can also be used for back files if they are cut out of the binding. This is the way we have photographed the 1914–1918 New York Times” (Case, “Photographing Newspapers,” p. 57).
7. “This was a major decision”: S. Branson Marley, Jr., “Newspapers and the Library of Congress,” Library of Congress Quarterly Journal 32:3 (July 1975), reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing, p. 425.
8. over a hundred and fifty dollars per volume: A price sheet distributed in 1998 by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, “Microfilm Department Hourly Standards and Price Per Frame,” lists a price of twenty-three cents per frame for “good newspapers”; the cost is forty cents per frame for “poor newspapers.” A typical volume—containing two weeks of a major newspaper from the first half of the twentieth century, say—might have two 150-page Sunday issues and thirteen thirty-page issues, or about 690 pages; that is, filming it would cost over $150 if the filmer classes it as good.
9. less than five dollars a volume: According to an Ohio State report, it cost $2.76 per volume to construct Berkeley’s Northern Regional Library Facility; $3.36 per volume to build the Sixth Stack Addition at the University of Illinois; $1.30 per volume (including land and financing) to build the Harvard Depository. Ohio Board of Regents, Academic Libraries in Ohio: Progress through Collaboration, Storage, and Technology, Report of the Library Study Committee, September 1987, appendix E.
10. “condensing records”: Case, “Photographing Newspapers,” p. 53.
11. wall of volumes of The New York Times: Reproduced as plate 1 in Fussler, Photographic Reproduction for Libraries. The caption is “Twelve Years of the New York Times in Original and on Film.” In those early years, Charles Puckette, the business manager of The New York Times, was less enthusiastic about replacing paper with film: “We recognize the need of the libraries to conserve space and when one is looking about for ways in which to save space, the large newspaper files naturally attract attention. But we are printers. We deal in the printed page just as librarians are primarily the custodians of the printed page. We think that the actual paper and ink as they appear in the form of the daily printed paper have inherent values in them which cannot be transmitted by film alone and which suffer, too, in reduction. An essential part of the record of today which you will preserve for the future will be the development of newspaper printing. And that part of the history of our times only the actual printed page will show.” C. McD. Puckette, “Question of Filming the New York Times,” in Raney, Microphotography for Libraries, p. 61.
12. who bought two microfilm readers: See Keyes Metcalf, Random Recollections of an Anachronism (New York: Readex Books, 1980), pp. 276–77. In 1935, “a film reproduction of the New York Herald Tribune replaced the Japanese-tissued bound file and since that time has been the only back file for the period available to readers,” Metcalf proudly wrote at the time. Keyes Metcalf, “Microphotography in the New York Public Library,” in Raney, Microphotography for Libraries, p. 85. (Semi-transparent Japanese tissue, applied with paste and pressed through a heated mangle, reinforced the pages.) See also Metcalf’s “Newspapers and Microphotography,” The Journal of Documentary Reproduction 2:3 (September 1939), which grants that the foreign-newspaper film that he is producing at Harvard “costs much more than the original,” but when you take into account the cost of binding and storage things begin to even out.
13. “to help push microphotography”: Quoted in David C. Weber, “The Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Project, 1938–1955,” Harvard Library Bulletin (spring 1956), reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing.
14. sprocket perforations: Thomas A. Bourke, “The Curse of Acetate; or, a Base Conundrum Confronted,” Microform Review 23:1 (winter 1994); and Thomas A. Bourke, “Scholarly Micropublishing, Preservation Microfilming, and the National Preservation Effort in the Last Two Decades o
f the Twentieth Century: History and Prognosis,” Microform Review 19:1 (winter 1990).
15. siege of Paris: See Ralph de Sola, Microfilming (New York: Essential Books, 1944), pp. 22–25.
16. Eugene Power: See Jack Rubin, A History of Micrographics in the First Person (Silver Spring, Md.: National Micrographics Association, 1980), pp. 69–70. In the OSS project, Power had help from Frederick Kilgour, who went on to glory as the founder of OCLC, the bibliographic database. See “Eugene Barnum Power” and “Frederick Gridley Kilgour” in American Society of Information Scientists (ASIS), Pioneers of Information Science in North America, www.asis.org/Features/Pioneers/isp.htm.
17. Neil MacKay: Neil MacKay, The Hole in the Card: The Story of the Microfilm Aperture Card (St. Paul: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, 1966), p. 5. See also Rubin, History of Micrographics, which quotes Langan’s own Notes on the Early History of Microfilm Aperture Cards; and Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 107.
18. Vernon D. Tate: See Rubin, History of Micrographics, pp. 57–58. In the thirties, as Herman Fussler wrote approvingly in Photographic Reproduction for Libraries, the National Archives, under Vernon Tate’s direction, filmed bulky governmental records, which “are then destroyed except for a small percentage (e.g., 10 per cent) kept to illustrate the original format. The saving in space thus obtained is very great.” Tate himself wrote: “Legislation was procured to enable the disposition under certain conditions of valuable records that have been microfilmed.” Vernon D. Tate, “Microphotography in Wartime,” Journal of Documentary Reproduction 5:3 (September 1942); 134–35.
19. “secret military weapon”: Tate, “Microphotography in Wartime.”