Should libraries be required to preserve every single book that enters its collection? Should they work to keep as many as possible on the shelves? Should they weed incessantly to make room for new material? Should they buy microfilm rather than keep runs of journals and newspapers on the shelves? Nicholson Baker's book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper has provoked many of these kinds of questions as I cobble together my stance on how libraries should act in these situations. Mass digitization projects, like Project Gutenberg and ibiblio, attempt to copy existing works for the generations to come. Baker rants about people like Michael Lesk, who apparently want to throw away mind-numbing amounts of perfectly good material in favor of digitizing it (and throwing the originals to greedy private sellers). I fall somewhere in the middle, but hesitate to spend my life savings on a warehouse full of original newspaper runs.
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