6. cutting machine: O’Brien, Story of the Sun; Munsell, Chronology, p. 82.
7. black specks: Herring, Paper and Paper Making, p. 88. India rubber, writes Herring, “is a source of much greater annoyance to the paper maker than is readily conceived.”
8. equal to England’s and France’s combined: Munsell, Chronology, p. 144.
9. Rag imports: Munsell, Chronology, pp. 126, 138.
10. “Complaints of the price and scarcity”: Munsell, Chronology, p. 136.
11. “on account of the high price”: Munsell, Chronology, p. 136.
12. Several generations of papermakers: See Munsell, Chronology, and Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943).
13. a paper made from horseradish: Munsell, Chronology, p. 137.
14. “seem to invite us”: Quoted in Hunter, Papermaking, p. 233.
15. “reluctant to spare even a fragment”: Hunter, Papermaking, p. 286n.
16. “flames would literally spout”: Quoted in Bob Brier, Egyptian Mummies (New York: William Morrow, 1994), p. 318.
17. “locomotives of Egypt”: Mummies were bought “by the ton or by the graveyard” as locomotive fuel, Mark Twain half-skeptically noted in his 1869 book of travels, Innocents Abroad. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, the New Pilgrims’ Progress (New York: Hippocrene Books, n.d.; facsimile of Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, 1869), p. 632.
18. Punch: “Musings on Mummy-Paper,” Punch 12 (May 29, 1847), p. 224.
19. twenty-three tons: Munsell, Chronology, p. 120.
20. “fairer (Pharaoh)”: The pun is Deck’s, not mine.
21. exactly contemporary with the publication: Deck’s article is dated “March, 1855” at the end, although it appeared in the 1854 volume of the American Institute’s Transactions.
22. J. Priestly bought 1,215 bales: Munsell, Chronology, p. 142.
23. “It is within”: “The Rag and Paper Business,” New York Tribune, November 4, 1856.
24. “made from the wrappages”: “Paper from Egyptian Mummies,” Syracuse Daily Standard, August 19, 1856 (undated editorial reprinted from The Albany Journal). See also Munsell, Chronology, p. 149.
25. “into the hopper”: Munsell, Chronology, p. 198. The report appeared in an editorial in the Bunker Hill Aurora, sometime in 1866.
26. Dard Hunter was oddly hesitant: Hunter, Papermaking, pp. 287–91. Joseph Dane goes further. He believes mummy paper to be a “delusion” and a “myth,” and he has no confidence in Hunter’s sources for Syracuse, Broadalbin, and Gardiner; and he isn’t at all sure about Deck’s Swiftian proposal, either. But Dane hasn’t read Deck’s proposal, which, he says, is “untraceable”—Hunter gave no citation for it and called it a “manuscript,” which makes Dane suspicious. I traced Deck by calling the helpful librarian at the Onondaga Historical Association, Judy Haven. Joseph A. Dane, “The Curse of the Mummy Paper,” Printing History 18:2 (1995).
27. Horace Greeley: Greeley was an active member of the American Institute; he became its president in 1866. John Campbell, a paper merchant a few doors down from Dr. Deck on Nassau Street, was also a member of the Institute in 1855. I found them listed in a scarce pamphlet owned by Columbia University: Catalogue of the Life and Annual Members of the American Institute of the City of New York (New York: New York Printing Co., 1868).
28. Richard Hoe: Hoe’s specialty was high-speed presses. Without plentiful, cheap paper, publishers would be less likely to convert to faster equipment; I speculate that Hoe may have had an interest in Deck’s proposal for that reason. Hoe had served on the committee in 1852 that organized the Institute’s popular fair at Castle Garden (now Battery Park), where novelties of science and engineering were awarded prizes. Morse’s telegraph was first displayed at the 1842 fair; Walt Whitman delivered a “Song of the Exposition” to open the 1871 fair, announcing that America would build a cathedral of sacred industry that was “mightier than Egypt’s tombs.”
29. whiskey blenders: Nicolas Barker is the source of this image.
30. Hall and McChesney: Hendrix TenEyck, an executive of Hall and McChesney, was president of the American Microfilm Association when Verner Clapp gave his keynote address in 1959.
CHAPTER 7 – Already Worthless
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1. “A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis”: William Richard Lemberg, Ph.D. diss., School of Library and Information Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1995, www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/publications/DigtlDoc.pdf. Michael Buckland, Lemberg’s thesis supervisor at Berkeley, writes that “one of the principal expected benefits of the move from paper-based to digital libraries is in the massive cost-savings expected to result from an expected reduction in duplication.” Michael Buckland, “Searching Multiple Digital Libraries: A Design Analysis” (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/oasis/multisrch.htm (viewed August 13, 2000).
2. “the most valuable fibre”: Munsell, Chronology. Munsell is at first unfamiliar with esparto grass, calling it “spartum,” “Exparto,” and “waterbroom”—he attributes its initial use to a Parisian stationer named Jean A. Farina, in 1852. The material “at first encountered great opposition both from proprietors and their workmen, but finally assumed vast importance as a raw material” (p. 124). In 1866, Lloyd’s Newspaper imported two hundred and sixty tons of esparto grass to London (p. 200); in 1870, there was an esparto shortage, and the price more than doubled (p. 213); in 1871, Lloyd, the newspaper publisher, owned 180,000 acres in Algeria, on which he raised his own esparto crop (p. 221); in 1872, English esparto imports had passed 130,000 tons, and Munsell writes that the Times “was printed on paper made more or less of this material, as was that of most of the other leading journals, periodicals and current publications generally” (p. 226). In its article “Paper,” the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica has a large and handsome engraving of the “Sinclair Esparto Boiler,” featuring recirculative “vomiting pipes,” and no pictures of wood-pulping equipment. See also British Paper and Board Makers’ Association, Paper Making: A General Account of Its History, Processes, and Applications (Kenley, Eng., 1950), pp. 31, 47, 101. The turn-of-the-century English book, then, is likely to have little or no wood pulp in it; American paper and English paper have different compositions and are likely to age differently.
3. Lesk: Michael Lesk, Practical Digital Libraries: Books, Bytes, and Bucks (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1997). Lemberg’s dissertation gets a paragraph on pp. 76–77.
4. “very high performance Backbone Network Service”: E.g., a 1999 National Science Foundation grant of $422,000 to Harvard for a “High-Performance Internet Connection” connecting Harvard to NYNEX and the NSF’s vBNS, in order to support scientific projects and “Digital Library Applications.” Of course Harvard should have high-speed Internet connections, if it needs them, but the federal government shouldn’t be paying for them, and the money shouldn’t come bundled in a plan to destroy traditional libraries.
5. routinely prepare for digitization: At a 1998 conference sponsored by the Research Libraries Group and Great Britain’s National Preservation Office, John E. McIntyre, head of preservation of the National Library of Scotland, discussed the results of an informal survey of digitization practices in a paper called “Protecting the Physical Form.” He wrote: “Returns from the Preparation Group’s questionnaire suggest that disbinding in order to scan a volume is common, in most cases so that a flat bed scanner can be used.” John E. McIntyre, “Protecting the Physical Form,” in Guidelines for Digital Imaging, Joint RLG and NPO Preservation Conference, 1998, www.rlg.org/preserv/joint/mcintyre.htm.
6. “knowing that the original will be disbound”: Carla Montori, “Re: electronic/paper format & weeding,” PADG (Preservation Administrators Discussion Group), December 15, 1997, archived on the CoOL (Conservation OnLine) website, palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/padg/1997/12/msg00011.htm (viewed September 29, 2000).
7. M
aking of America: Michigan’s Making of America books are to be found at moa.umdl.umich.edu.
8. “It is substantially cheaper”: Michael Lesk, “Substituting Images for Books: The Economics for Libraries,” Document Analysis and Information Retrieval (symposium), Las Vegas, April 1996, www.lesk.com/mlesk/unlv/unlv.htm (viewed September 19, 2000).
9. “avaricious in [their] consumption”: William G. Bowen, “JSTOR and the Economics of Scholarly Communication,” the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, October 4, 1995, www.mellon.org/jsesc.htm. JSTOR’s webpage background document states that the “basic idea” behind Bowen’s JSTOR “was to convert the back issues of paper journals into electronic formats that would allow savings in space (and in capital costs associated with that space) while simultaneously improving access to the journal content.” JSTOR, Background, www.umich.edu./~jstor/about/background.htm (1996) (viewed September 15, 2000). A recent JSTOR brochure entitled “Electronic Archives of Core Mathematics Journals” says: “By making the complete runs of important journal backfiles available and searchable over the World Wide Web, JSTOR not only provides new research possibilities, it also helps librarians reduce longterm costs associated with storing these materials.”
10. survey conducted by JSTOR: JSTOR, Bound Volume Survey, April 3, 2000, www.jstor.org/about/bvs.htm (viewed September 19, 2000).
11. “modem life”: “The third class of tendencies is easily identifiable with those impulses to disinterested benevolence which are so prominent in modern [OCR’d as modem] life.” Henry Rutgers Marshall, “Emotions versus Pleasure-Pain,” Mind, n.s. 4:14. (April 1895): 180–94. I also got multiple hits for “modemist” and “modemism,” none having to do with data-communications.
CHAPTER 8 – A Chance to Begin Again
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1. “application of the camera”: Raney, “Introduction,” in Microphotography for Libraries, p. v.
2. “a couple of curious librarians”: M. Llewellyn Raney, “A Capital Truancy,” The Journal of Documentary Reproduction 3:2 (June 1940). Possibly Keyes Metcalf was there, and the scout was probably from the Rockefeller Foundation; Charles Z. Case of Recordak helped out with the cost analysis.
3. “Every research library would”: Fremont Rider (writing anonymously), “Microtext in the Management of Book Collections: A Symposium,” College and Research Libraries, July 1953, reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing, p. 206. Rider presented this proposal anonymously here, but in other settings he repeated it almost word for word under his own name.
4. James T. Babb: In the 1952–1953 annual report of the Yale University library, Babb announced that “our shelves are weighted down with many books and periodicals that we easily could do without.” In the past, he said, Yale was “ambitious to be a library of record; that is, have one copy of every book of any importance.” This was “a highly questionable ambition,” Babb believed; and it was time to undo what his forebears had done. He proposed, and the Yale Corporation approved, a “drastic” plan to “1. Decatalogue and discard material which is considered to have no further scholarly value,” and “2. Purchase or reproduce with our own equipment, in microtext form other books and periodicals, the original then being discarded.” James T. Babb, Report, 1952–1953, quoted in John H. Ottemiller, “The Selective Book Retirement Program at Yale,” Yale University Library Gazette 34:2 (October 1959).
5. “Roses, jasmine”: Fremont Rider, And Master of None: An Autobiography in the Third Person (Middletown, Conn.: Godfrey Memorial Library, 1955), p. 46.
6. “converted to psychism”: Fremont Rider, Are the Dead Alive? (New York: B. W. Dodge, 1909). Theodore Dreiser supplied the book’s title; David Belasco based a play on it called “The Return of Peter Grimm.”
7. “They are thoroughly disgusted”: Fremont Rider (writing as Alfred Wayland), Are Our Banks Betraying Us (New York: Anvil Press, 1932), quoted in Rider, And Master of None, p. 98.
8. “astonishing flood”: Rider, And Master of None, p. 99.
9. “You are right!”: Roosevelt’s letter (typewritten except for the last two sentences) reads: “Dear Mr. Rider: Thank you ever so much for your very nice letter and the pamphlet which you sent me. I have been much interested in reading it. You are right! Keep it up— Very sincerely yours, Franklin D. Roosevelt.” The letter is dated “At Warm Springs, Georgia, May 6, 1932.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Fremont Rider, Fremont Rider papers, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. (Suzy Taraba, Wesleyan’s university archivist and head of special collections, located it and sent me a copy.) Roosevelt gave his nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 2, 1932: “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”
10. He began a system: Rider, And Master of None, p. 152: “Wholesale methods of disposition do not bring the highest possible prices; but they enabled Wesleyan to dispose of its discards at very small handling cost”; after buying fifty thousand volumes and selling off thirty thousand, Rider was pleased to discover that “the additions to the Library actually cost it nothing.”
11. “mathematical fact”: Fremont Rider, The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library (New York: Hadham Press, 1944), p. 8.
12. “natural law”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 16.
13. “veritable tidal wave”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 13.
14. “It is a problem”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 13.
15. “We absolutely must”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 13. Rider’s book predated by a year Vannevar Bush’s famous article in the Atlantic Monthly, “As We May Think” (July 1945), which envisioned a scholar’s workstation holding thousands of books on microfilm.
16. later students of library progress: Robert E. Molyneux, “What Did Rider Do? An Inquiry into the Methodology of Fremont Rider’s The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library,” Libraries and Culture 29:1 (summer 1994); and Steven Leach, “The Growth Rates of Major Academic Libraries: Rider and Purdue Reviewed,” College and Research Libraries, November 1976. Leach writes: “The Rider hypothesis cannot be used reliably to project library growth”; after reaching three million volumes, “an individual library can anticipate a deceleration in its rate of collection growth.” On the other hand, Leach confirms “Rider’s fundamental perception that library growth would become an increasingly perplexing problem for university libraries.” Molyneux finds “serious flaws in Rider’s analysis” and argues that Rider’s law of exponential doubling “resulted from a miscalculation which was either not caught in the subsequent versions of these tables or caught and not reported.” It is “troubling,” writes Molyneux, that “Rider’s analysis escaped criticism and was cited approvingly for so many years, especially given the fact that the theory so obviously contradicted common experience.”
17. “tacit confession of past failure”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 56.
18. “new expenses and fresh problems”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 57.
19. “gratifyingly close”: Fremont Rider, “Microcards vs. the Cost of Book Storage,” American Documentation 2:1 (January 1951), reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing. See also p. 203, where Rider (anonymously) says that the storage cost would come “gratifyingly close to 99%,” and Rider, The Scholar, pp. 101–2. Rider had no qualms about clearing out existing card catalogs; his paper “The Possibility of Discarding the Card Catalog” appeared in Library Quarterly in July 1938.
20. “micro-reading machines”: Fremont Rider, “Author’s Statement,” in Keyes Metcalf et al., “The Promise of Microprint: A Symposium Based on The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library,” College and Research Libraries, March 1945.
21. Microcard Foundation: Rider, And Master of None, pp. 204–5; Martin Jamison, “The Microcard: Fremont Rider’s Precomputer Revolution,” in Libraries and Culture 23:1 (winter 1988).
22. Atomic Energy Commission: See Adkinson, Two Centuries of Federal Information, p. 47. The Department of Defense and the weather bureau were also users of Microcards: Rider, And Master of None, p. 205
.
23. “produces heat which”: J. S. Parsonage, “The ‘Scholar’ and After: A Study of the Development of the Microcard,” Library Association Record, November 1949, reprinted in Veaner, Studies in Micropublishing.
24. conventional microfilm: Microcards are hard on the eyes, but Readex Microprint, another opaque system that relies on reflected light, is worse, in my experience.
25. 1,600 Microcard-viewing machines: Jamison, “The Microcard.” In his autobiography, Rider claims that there were three thousand reading machines in use, but he often exaggerated. Rider, And Master of None, p. 205.
26. “To any one who has New England blood”: Rider, And Master of None, p. 112.
27. “All that we have to do”: Rider, The Scholar, p. 115.
28. “required reading”: Metcalf et al., “The Promise of Microprint.”
29. “it is difficult”: Edward G. Freehafer, in Metcalf et al., “The Promise of Microprint.” In the same symposium, Donald Coney of the University of Texas wrote: “Mr. Rider’s proposal for the transfer of books to micro-cards is a genuinely epochal idea. If widely adopted, it would mark the first significant change in books since the substitution of the codex for the roll.”
30. page full of praise: Rider, And Master of None, p. 202.
CHAPTER 9 – Dingy, Dreary, Dog-eared, and Dead
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1. Rider’s friend and ally: Rider wrote a letter of support endorsing Clapp for the position of librarian of Congress. Betty Milum, “Eisenhower, ALA, and the Selection of L. Quincy Mumford,” Libraries and Culture 30:1 (winter 1995), n. 16. Clapp’s diary records a breakfast with Rider (July 13, 1951) and a request from the Microcard Foundation to borrow material from the Library of Congress for copying (March 16, 1951). Verner Clapp papers, Library of Congress. Both Rider and Clapp were frustrated inventors—Rider developed the Wesleyan book truck (“astonishingly practical,” he said in his autobiography), and he had “revolutionary” ideas for vertical-takeoff-and-landing propellers; Clapp became caught up in the inventions that the Council on Library Resources was paying for.