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Re: Baker



Daniel,

While I agree with your concern about ad hominem attacks, I have to respond
to your third point about him being an archivist.  Bless him for his
efforts, he is still holding archivists up to a standard that is, frankly,
impossible to reach.  What I think most of us would like is for him to admit
that it's not as simple as all that.  Several of us have brought up the
issue of staffing for his grand newspaper repository.  If he wants us
archivists to preserve it all, he's going to have to start thinking like us.
That includes providing access to his collection, cataloging the collection
(on card files, if it makes him happy :) )

Our concerns as a profession are not that he's not an archivist - I applaud
him for taking on the role without the training.  The problems are 1) his
attacks on our profession do not take into account what we're really facing
(see my earlier emails on this subject); 2) his focus on the preservation
aspect to the exclusion of the other issues affecting archivists; 3) his
refusal to admit that current funding levels are not sufficient for what he
wants us to do.

Wonderful that he's preserving newspapers - will he provide access?  What
happens when he's off writing his next novel?  Will he drop his story to
answer a reference request?  Will he insure that there's staffing when he
goes on vacation?  These are the questions we all have to answer that he has
not, apparently, addressed (I haven't read the book, though I'm thinking I
should).

While there's been a lot of discussion on this (perhaps too much even for
me), it's still better than "get rich quick" and "anal itch".  What will
they think of next.

DS

______________________________________
Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
David Taylor Archives
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
155 Community Drive
Great Neck, NY 11021
mailto:dsokolow@nshs.edu

> -----Original Message-----
>
> (3) In a spirit of impatience, I might add that criticism of Baker for not
> being an archivist, a librarian, or "public" in the way in which he runs
> his self-created newspaper archive is, it seems to me, ill-judged,
> mean-spirited, and likely to be remarkably unproductive. The guy has at
> least put his own money and effort where his mouth is, and he has done so
> in an area that has nothing to do with his main business in life, writing.
> That kind of stuff counts in the arena of public perception. And should.
>
>

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