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Re: Baker's book and what he really said



Well, since I'm somewhat refreshed after an all-too-brief vacation
(during which I finally had the time to read Double Fold), I'll
enter the Nicholson Baker fray.

I agree with Mr. James that Baker does indeed make some sense in his
arguments about conservation versus preservation, deacidification versus
microfilm, book as object versus informational content, etc., and I'm sure
decisions were made in the past that, in retrospect, appear not to have
been the best solution to the problems at hand.

However, what I do not find in Baker's book is any sense of the scope of
the bigger issues that fed into those decisions.  If we accept the fact
that all the newspapers and books of the world are still only a small
portion of the universe of information, content, evidence, objects, then
it seems to me rather misguided to argue about what was or is being done
with newspapers without considering what was or is being done about
everything else.  There is far more at stake here than several runs of
newspapers in their original form.  Could we have saved one copy of every
printing of every newspaper every printed in the US, even if we had
unlimited resources at our disposal?  Maybe.  Should we try?  I'm not
convinced we should - everything we create does not necessarily deserve
to be saved in perpetuity.

Appraisal is the real issue here.  What is deemed of enough value to
warrant permanent retention in original format?  How do we reach those
decisions?  What resources are available to us to carry out those
decisions, and how does the availability of resources affect those
decisions? Baker's book raises some interesting points about a narrow
issue, but Baker's concerns are only a small part of a far more complex
concern - namely, how we, as information professionals, make the tough
choices that we are charged to make every day, and how well we help
others to understand why we made those choices.

Just my mullings on the subject.

Jim

Jim Gerencser, '93
College Archivist and
  Special Collections Librarian
Waidner-Spahr Library
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA  17013
  (717) 245-1094

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