I recently completed my reading of Double Fold by Nicholson Baker. This is one of the more impressive pieces of library scholarship I have yet read, and it shows how crazy (and cruel) librarians can be. Baker argues against microfilm and most digital conversions which destroy the original text in the process of their creation. With great detail, he describes some of the texts that have been destroyed, as well as the mania that resulted in these destructive "preservation" efforts. Baker's vocabulary is sometimes challenging, but the book moves along at a good clip, and it's a riveting expose ultimately of a problematic field. Recommended!
No comments:
Post a Comment