But I don't know of anything else you can do to preserve the massive amount of information libraries have in brittle condition. This is controversial some scholars feel it's a terrible thing to do. Baker certainly does. And more efforts to rescue books from the stacks are under way. Take anything, take a Sears catalog, and transport it 2000 years, and it will be sitting in a major museum.
Walls turns transcendental.
When you die, you don't partly die everything goes back to the elements. It's the same with books. We have to preserve what we can with the dollars we've got and the technology available. Vice may be inherent in any preservation effort, just as it sullies the books in Sterling's tower and the horny patrons skulking within. Reprobate Yalies will be conversing with the mighty dead for centuries, but many of those ghosts, like Sterling's architecture, will appear in proxy form.