Association of Research Libraries (ARL®)

Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:16:40 -0400

Dear Colleagues,

In the April 15,2001 New York Times Book Review section, there is a review of Nicholson Baker's book Double Fold, in which he takes librarians to task for failing to preserve original newspapers, books, journals, and other paper artifacts, and indeed, in the process of reformatting (microfilming, digitizing, etc.) actually destroying the originals. The reviewer cites the Cornell Making of America Project (Mellon-funded), speaking of "yodelingly high costs" for a computer project, and writes:

" And what institutions sometimes get for their money sometimes look like this passage, from the Cornell library's digital version of an1883 magazine article about an earthquake in Java: 'It xviii be unnecessamy for us to enter into further details of time catastrophic, save toremark that all we mepouted of time changes in time configumation of time hind lmadi time suirounding oceum bottom,beemi comifimmed, amid much mom-c extensive changes noticed.'" (p.8)

Although this quote makes Cornell look ridiculous, the reality is much different. This passage is cited from p. 219 of The Manufacturer and Builder,, which Cornell has made available in electronic form. An exact correct image of this page is available at http://resolver.library.cornell.edu/moap/abs1821 . In order to permit full text searching, we also created files using Optical Character Recognition software, which produced ASCII "plain text" with some errors. This OCR sits "behind" the image, and is meant for searching--not for reading. The reviewer implies that we are offering the garbled text as a substitute for the original, when it is actually an adjunct.

Far from being a waste of anyone's money, however, using OCR has unlocked the treasures of the page images for thousands of readers around the globe, and the Library regularly receives fan mail from Cornell alumni, graduates students working abroad, as well as from our own community here in Ithaca about the wealth of information to be found in the Making of America collection. William Safire, cited the project in September as a rich source for early examples of the use of a word, and the Oxford English Dictionary staff routinely access the Making of America files as well.

The issues Baker raises are important, and he spins a good story. However, the situation is extremely complex. Limited resources make the preservation of multiple copies of original artifacts problematic. The Library community must and will ensure that some copies of original artifacts are preserved in their original format. The best way to preserve a book is to store it in a carefully controlled environment and to limit consultation of its contents. At the same time, people increasingly value access to documents that is immediate and convenient, and libraries are responding by making documents available in digital form.

I have been a member of a Task Force of the Role of the Artifact in Library Collections for the last 18 months, and our group, comprised of university administrators, scholars, and librarians, has just issued its draft report http://www.clir.org/activities/details/task.html. Steve Nichols, the chair of the Task Force, (chair of the Romance Language Department at Johns Hopkins), will be here on April 25 to conduct a focus group with faculty and administrators who have an interest in this issue. Please contact Andrea Barnett, my assistant, at ajb17@cornell.edu if you would like a paper copy of the report (it's long) or if you would like to participate in the discussion session.

I hope, as this issue's profile is raised in the excitement surrounding the publication of Baker's book, scholars and other stakeholders will read what is written with a grain of salt, and be willing to engage constructively in how we might best address the matter of securing sufficient funding for preservation, coming up with a rational plan for distributed responsibility for preserving our nation's cultural heritage, and supporting access to our magnificent collections.

If you have any questions about this or any other matter relating to library policies and practices, please do call.

Sarah E. Thomas
University Librarian
201 Olin Library
Cornell University
phone: 607/255-3689
fax: 607/255-6788
http://campusgw.library.cornell.edu