Not always, as Nicholson Baker shows in Double Fold, an outraged and polemical history of microfilming, the well-intentioned folly that led to the destruction of thousands of scarce newspapers, journals and books. Like parents sacrificing their children to Moloch, trusted administrators disbound, chopped up and then sold or sent to landfills a significant portion of our American heritage. In the mid-19th century it was discovered that paper, till then made from cotton rags, could be manufactured from wood pulp, which is plentiful and cheap. Over time, such acidic paper will grow brown, brittle and friable. Leave this page of Book World outside to bake in the sun and it will metamorphose into a fragile dried-out sheet just waiting to be crumbled into confetti.
Preservation administrators thrive on system, orderly planning, neatness.
So few libraries ever bothered to rebind or reshelve material once it had been microfilmed. Besides, everything was now accessible through a handy-dandy viewfinder. Baker reminds us that the entire microfilm process is thoroughly riven with shoddiness. As many readers know all too well, the technological frustrations and migraine-inducing trauma of actually using a microfilm reader are such that only the most desperate scholars ever resort to the damn things. Probably within our lifetimes.