By Victor Greto
If newspapers are the first draft of history, does it matter if we have the actual draft, or just the information contained in the draft?
That’s one of the questions being asked in newspaper, library and academic circles throughout the country since the publication of novelist Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, a scathing denunciation of library policies that effectively destroyed thousands of bound original newspapers in lieu of microfilm and digitization.
Baker and many historians argue it’s vital to have the actual first draft of history.
“With microfilm, you lose the feel of the past, the layout of the paper,” said Charles Zelden, an associate professor of history at Nova Southeastern University. “The pictures are blurred. It’s not the same as flipping pages, seeing how things are laid out.”
“People don’t like to use microfilm,” said Mary Ann Grandy, head of Reference and Information Services at the Broward County Library. “It’s not user-friendly. It never has been.”
At the same time, librarians acknowledge there simply isn’t enough space to hold the daily growing number of newspapers in their original form.
There are currently about 375 newspapers published in the state of Florida alone.
Broward County head librarian Harriet Buchbinder said the nation’s public libraries are a public service industry.
“When you talk about a library with a minimum amount of resources,” she said, “you have to pick the best use of the resources. Is it the job of the library to own it, or to know where to find it?”
“From the public library perspective,” said Katherine Boyes, community relations coordinator for the Palm Beach County library system, “The information in the newspaper is important, not the newspapers themselves.”
Less is more
Current policies at both county libraries are to keep daily newspapers for about three months, or until the microfilm copies of them come in. Text of newspapers also are now available online.
Most libraries use the CREW method (Continuous Review, Evaluation and Weeding), which provides a series of ongoing guidelines for librarians.
CREW’s mantra is “less is more,” and includes directions on disposing of books containing outdated information, superseded editions, worn out items and books not circulated for more than three years.
Though CREW makes a point of insisting librarians collect as much as they can concerning local history, it says nothing of preserving original newspapers. “Brittle newspaper or fragments have little value in research,” is its one comment on the matter.
Delores Jenkins, a librarian at the University of Florida in Gainesville, was one of the main state librarians involved with the Florida Newspaper Project, which inventoried hundreds of newspapers throughout the state from 1994-1998 with an eye toward preserving in microfilm what was left.
“I’ve been in libraries 35 years,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of the switches in technology, and this causes us to have dyspepsia, deciding what is going to be the most stable media.”
Jenkins said in the past two decades, librarians have had to contend with both losing space and changing media, from paper to floppy disks to CD-ROMs to online databases.
“If you’ve got the room, keep it,” she said of the newspapers. “But most places don’t have the room. You simply have to make nasty decisions. Baker is writing as if we’re doing it maliciously. Most people don’t need the visceral thrill of using the newspaper.”
Microfilm-mania
The title of Baker’s book comes from a practice some librarians throughout the country performed on books printed before 1950. They followed an experiment conducted by the Council on Library Resources beginning in 1957, which took pages from books printed during the first half of the century, and “aged” them by folding them back and forth in a specially designed machine.
Experimenters concluded that most printed matter made before 1950 would probably not make it to 2000.
Other librarians conducted their own tests by hand, if the paper tore after two or three double folds (folding the corner of a page back and forth each side of the leaf), it was considered a prime candidate for microfilming before, they feared, it might crumble.
They were wrong.
According to Baker, the results of this “experiment” led libraries to get rid of nearly a million books worth $39 million.
Baker’s book has been characterized as a jeremiad or bitter lament, and it is full of examples of librarians’ missteps and their post-World War II fascination with microfilming. Baker writes that this mania was partially inspired by Vernon Clapp, second-in-command at the Library of Congress, who also happened to be a consultant for the CIA, famous for its espousal of microfilming documents.
According to Baker, Clapp and others championed a “preservation” effort that sparked the Library of Congress to film 93 million pages and throw out more than $10 million worth of public property from 1968 to 1984.
Microfilm-mania lasted through the 1980s, a decade that saw newspapers begin to archive their back issues and stories online and on CD-ROM, and dispose of the originals.
History lost
Zelden says the loss of many of the originals has been devastating.
“It makes the period real for me,” he said of original newspapers. “Something that happened long before you were born was real. Reading the paper and feeling the period helps you keep honest.”
But It really isn’t just about the visceral thrill of holding history in your hands, Zelden said.
“One of the things that happens when you flip pages, is you discover things,” he says. “I’ve found things I never meant to. Microfilm is too painful to read, let alone flip through. There have been key documents I use in my teaching that I’ve discovered by accident.”
If you use Zelden’s criteria, it is much tougher stumbling onto history in South Florida.
Most back issues of the Sun-Sentinel and its various ancestors, including the Fort Lauderdale News, are gone. Aside from scattered original issues at various institutions in their respective counties, both the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post only have microfilm copies of their newspapers.
According to Jenkins’ Newspaper project, you’re not going to find one single bound volume of the Sun-Sentinel anywhere in the state.
You’ll find scattered issues at the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society and even in some private collections and other institutions, but where there once may have been rows of hard bound papers filled with the first draft of Broward County history, now they are gone. Forever.
There are complete sets or runs of the newspaper’s microfilm in several parts of the state, including the public library downtown, starting with the first 1913 issue.
What happened to the originals?
“At the time they didn’t appreciate what they were producing,” Jenkins said of newspaper publishers. “If we had our druthers, we’d go back 150 years and tell them not to print it on crappy paper.”
Before about 1850, newspapers were printed on rag linen, and many of those newspapers have lasted — when people made the decision to keep them, that is.
The Library of Congress has about 30,000 volumes of newspapers printed before 1850 because of the paper on which they were produced is so hardy, said Jill Brett, public affairs officer.
After 1850, newspapers were made from pulped wood, which has a much shorter life span, and were coated with alum-rosin, which turns yellow when exposed to light.
The Library of Congress has the Sun-Sentinel in microfilm starting with 1990.
“The reality is, put a copy of the Sun-Sentinel on the patio for several days and see what it looks like,” said Karen Muller, a librarian at the American Library Association, a national organization that sets standards for libraries throughout the country.
“Multiply that over a number of years. Even in a dark place, the wood fiber that’s in wood pulp paper, which is what older newsprint is, decays fast,” she said. The ALA has no policy on keeping original newspapers.
Starting in the 1960s, Brett said, the Library of Congress “started systematically disposing of newspapers [made from wood pulp] after we microfilmed and checked them for accuracy. We couldn’t possibly save them from deteriorating. The point of a library is to allow people to use the materials, and newspaper is so acidic we couldn’t possibly retain the papers in any usable form.”
Even so, those old newspapers still last. As Baker points out, many newspapers printed in the late 19th century have not disintegrated when they’re kept out of the light and are stored in a cool, dry place. And there’s no reason to think they can’t last many more decades if they’re handled with care.
Preservation effort
Margaret Engel, managing editor for the Newseum, a museum near Washington D.C. dedicated to the history of newspapers, says her museum has been “extremely concerned about the loss of America’s journalism heritage as newspapers crumble and library collections are discarded.”
Since the museum opened its doors in 1997, Engel says, it has been acquiring old sets of newspapers through donations and loans.
“As far as efforts by state historical societies and libraries and individual newspaper morgues,” she says, “we’re constantly on the warpath to let them know that entire runs of papers should not be discarded.”
No matter how small the newspaper, Engel said, “We want the originals saved.”
The Library of Congress recently announced a National Preservation Policy Planning Conference to be held this summer, which will specifically address the issue of the “preservation of printed materials in original format.”