Night Thoughts and Day Musings

"And now, something completely different."

Monty Python's Flying Circus

As is the custom, when I was confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church I was told to pick a new name, a saintly name to symbolize my religious maturity. Perhaps not auspiciously, but certainly characteristically, I chose Thomas because he was the doubter. Though I will admit that my sense of mischief is at least as strong as my sense of inquiry, I truly believe that doubting is a healthy activity, one that we sincere preservation types don't engage in often enough. So for this issue's "Out of the Question" I thought I would put together all those questions that I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself--the trivial ones along with the important ones. No answers this time. I just want to invite you to join me in some good old fashioned dog-in-the-mangering accompanied by some biting of the hand that feeds you. This is the sort of activity that institutions avoid and a free press is meant to foster. I don't expect anyone will thank me for doing this but perhaps I'll say something that a number of you have been thinking and spark some response.

Q. If original research is the investigation of things not already examined, doesn't that mean that research libraries, by definition, must collect works that may not be used much or at all for a long time? What does this say about use as a criterion for selection for preservation?

Q. Has descriptive bibliography ever done anything to improve the human condition or contributed anything of note to the welfare of the world?

Q. What do we gain from double-fanning adhesive bindings that we wouldn't get from single-fanning?

Q. What would happen if we never microfilmed another book?

Q. Why does the National Endowment for the Humanities have so much control over what gets microfilmed? Doesn't this raise some significant first ammendment issues?

Q. We spend a good deal of effort selecting things to preserve but do we know that we're doing any better than we would if we picked things at random?

Q. Am I the only one who thinks that most cooperative projects share nothing much more than the grant writing and the money?

Q. Will new books printed on paper be as hard to find in twenty years as new phono discs are now? And would that be good or bad? (Are we going to be out of a job?)

Q. How much do we spend preserving rare books and are they worth it?

Q. Has anyone tried to get funding to preserve the literature of pornography? or anarchy? or racism?

Q. Should we, do we, presume that market value equates with preservation value?

Q. Does anybody know for sure how well paperbacks hold up to library use when they are not rebound in hard covers?

Q. Do I have to get a degree in electrical engineering before I can get serious about preserving electronic records?

Q. When we choose not to preserve a brittle book do we (should we), at least sometimes, face up to the reality of the decision we have made and chuck the thing out?

Q. Aren't there too many books already?

Q. Money aside, how much can libraries afford to lose before our complex culture collapses from lack of intellectual infrastructure? How much can libraries afford to keep before our complex culture collapses under the sheer weight of its own complications? (Intellectual infrastructure--isn't that a good phrase? Did I just invent it?)

Q. How long will microfilm last, anyway?

Q. Haven't we made books in our own image--some of them skinny and ascetic; some overweight and hearty; but all recognizably books, chockfull of variety, subtlety and surprises? And isn't that one of the reasons we cherish them so?

Q. If books and serials are printed on acid-free paper, as increasing numbers of them are, what's wrong with oversewing them?

Q. Does the change in paper from not very brittle to quite brittle, which seems to happen very abruptly, signify the point at which the strength of the individual fibers to withstand folding becomes weaker than the bond between fibers? (I really do think of this sort of thing in the middle of the night--scary isn't it?)

Q. Wasn't Edison's invention of recorded sound the second most important development in the history of preservation? So, why have I never heard anyone say so?

Q. As the character of libraries change from being repositories of objects to being access points for, and conduits to information who will take up the concern for preservation now assumed by librarians?

Q. What is the effect of bubble gum residue on baseball cards?

Q. How do you shelve a set of plan views of the Lungarno in Firenze, 1 meter by 30 cm, that were published rolled in a tube about the size of a can of tennis balls and which are accompanied by a bound volume of text?

Q. Did Bugs Bunny ever find out what was up? Will I?

This article first appeared Conservation Administration News (CAN)
No. 49, April 1992 as the Feature "Out of the Question."

Night Thoughts and Day Musings

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