Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper

Baker, Nicholson

ISBN 10: 0375726217 / ISBN 13: 9780375726217

Published by Knopf Doubleday Pub, USA, 2001

About this Item

Trade paperback with Signed Copy sticker on front and a sticker for National Book Critics Circle Award Winner. 370 pp including index.

Seller Inventory # 133376

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Pub, USA
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375726217
• ISBN 13: 9780375726217
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Condition: Used - Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Reference

About this title

Synopsis

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 and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age.

With meticulous detective work and Baker’s well-known explanatory power, Double Fold reveals a secret history of microfilm lobbyists, former CIA agents, and warehouses where priceless archives are destroyed with a machine called a guillotine. Baker argues passionately for preservation, even cashing in his own retirement account to save one important archive–all twenty tons of it. Written the brilliant narrative style that Nicholson Baker fans have come to expect, Double Fold is a persuasive and often devastating book that may turn out to be The Jungle of the American library system.

About the Author

Nicholson Baker has published five novels–The Mezzanine, Room Temperature, Vox, The Fermata, and The Everlasting Story of Nory–and two works of nonfiction, U and I and The Size of Thoughts. He lives with his wife and two children in Maine.