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Vandals in the Stacks?: A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries (review)

Richard Cox was stimulated to write this book by the response of the general public and the library and information science profession to Nicholson Baker’s writings about libraries in general and his book, Double Fold (Random House, 2001) in particular. Baker professed shock when he discovered that libraries in this country and abroad were discarding original newspapers. He expressed alarm that scholars would not have the sources they need, that is, the artifact itself. Baker sought—but did not find—conspiracies among the major research libraries and institutions; in his view, only a conspiracy, or perhaps ineptness, could support a program of the reformatting of newspapers, particularly through microfilming, as a means of preserving content. Baker used his skills as a novelist to bring what had been a professional debate into the public arena. While Cox’s response is personal, he builds his arguments upon his solid knowledge and authority as a library educator (professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s archival studies program), practicing archivist, former editor of the American Archivist (1991–95), and widely published author of books and journal articles in archives management and archives in the digital age. Cox contrasts his informed perspective with Baker’s naïve one and goes beyond attacking Baker’s points, acknowledging that the issues are important to society at large. While the profession has long debated the questions of what materials should be preserved in their original form, what materials should be preserved by reformatting to protect the content, and what methods are appropriate to use in reformatting, these were professional debates which rarely were reported in the general press. Cox admits that in popularizing the issues, Baker has inspired public debate and consideration, and thus, provided a service to society and to the institutions responsible for the selection, acquisition, organization and cataloging, provision of access, and preservation of all kinds of information. Baker is not the only one concerned about the original artifact, and Cox is the first to admit that. Both authors acknowledge important scholarly writing on the subject, referring particularly to the work of G. Thomas Tanselle, whose Literature and Artifacts (Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1998), includes some of his seminal writing on the subject. And Cox cites the perspectives of some of