Emily’s post on library nostalgia brings to mind Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold, a book I had to read when I was in library school. I remember very strongly disliking this book (a sentiment with which my cat apparently agreed, if you’ll note the tattered book cover and the satisfied, unapologetic cat next to it). But in order to recall more specifically my undoubtedly penetrating insights on this book, I pulled out my 500 GB hard drive to retrieve the paper I wrote for my intro to information studies class.

As I reread my paper for the first time in nearly three years, I was immensely amused by the ardor with which I registered my displeasure with Baker’s argument–let’s just say “very strongly disliking” is a generous characterization. In this paper–on which I earned an A, I might add–I describe Baker as “petulantly stomping his foot,” “peevish and pessimistic,” “woefully naïve and absurdly unrealistic,” “too busy insulting librarians and congratulating himself on his noble and heroic deed,” “resentfully grousing,” “risibly ignorant,” “blithely ignoring or distorting the reality of the expenses of library storage,” and, finally, “Baker’s solutions are either nonexistent or useless.”

Wow. I wish I could go back in time to my first-semester-of-library-school self and ask, “Gee, tell me, Maria. How do you really feel about Nicholson Baker?”

What about this book provoked such strong feelings, you might ask, and what does this have to do with library nostalgia? Well, I’ll tell you. Baker’s argument is informed by library nostalgia–more specifically, nostalgia for old newspapers. Most libraries can longer house old newspapers, due to shrinking physical storage capacites and the instability of the medium, and in order to preserve access to these materials, libraries turn to microfilm and digitization. Baker has a major problem with this solution. I don’t dispute Baker’s contention that microfilm and digitized microfilm is not the same has holding the newspaper in your hand, and turning the pages, getting newsprint on your hands, and smelling that newspaper smell. But that nostalgia isn’t enough to justify holding onto old newspapers ad infinitum. The fantasy of what we want the library to be does not match the reality of what the library can actually do.

The central flaw in Baker’s argument, I believe, is that his nostalgia is individual and specific, not communitarian. Baker used his own personal funds, augmented by grants, to purchase old newspapers, which he housed in his own personal warehouse in New Hampshire. Baker states: “Six thousand square feet of space near where I live, with room to shelve all the papers and to hold a small reading room, costs about twenty-six thousand dollars a year to rent—about the salary of one microfilm technician” (269). Baker neglects to acknowledge that if these newspapers were microfilmed, and if these microfilms were digitized and put online, they would be available to a significantly larger group of people. If a researcher wants to view a specific issue of Baker’s repository of the Chicago Tribune, he can travel to New Hampshire and make arrangements to visit Baker’s warehouse. Baker will have to search through his thousands and thousands of newspapers, which he presumably has organized, although since he is not a librarian, probably organized inexpertly, to locate the single issue in question. Alternatively, this same researcher can go to a library that subscribes to ProQuest’s American Periodicals Series or similar, conduct a search, and retrieve the identical newspaper in a digitized version. Baker’s model of preservation makes him a gatekeeper and custodian; digital preservation makes librarians facilitators of access for multiple users. While Baker’s rescued newspapers sit in his personal warehouse, accessible only to him, digital libraries provide much wider access to these material than physical collections could ever supply.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying this: I am not unsympathetic to the nostalgia that inspires longing for the old-fashioned library and its old-fashioned ways. But this nostalgia, more often than not, is incompatible with reality. I think one of the things that frustrated me so much about Baker’s argument was that he is an outsider, a non-librarian, criticizing what librarians do. He asks, “Why can’t our great libraries have the will to find room to accommodate what we so desperately what them to keep?” (36). My answer to that is: we are actually trying to do this, but we also know that physical space and storage is over, and we are in a digital space and storage era. We will do our best to preserve access to old newspapers and books, but you, the user, have to be willing to relinquish your nostalgia and be willing to page through that 1896 issue of the New York Times with a mouse, not your newsprint-stained fingers.

Oh, and by the way: did you notice how I mentioned retrieving my old library school paper from my external hard drive? This is because paper takes up space and eventually falls apart. However, God willing and the crick don’t rise (as they say in these Kentuckian parts), my small, portable, and extremely capacious hard drive will be around for much longer.