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10. Preserving the artifacts
Commentary and correspondence about the British Library's disposal
of foreign newspapers, Times Literary Supplement (20002001).
H. R. Woudhuysen, "Vandals of Colindale: Why the British
Library is Discarding Newspapers," 18 Aug. 2000, 14-15; Howard
Cooke, "The British Library," 25 Aug. 2000, 17; Alan Shelston,
"Libraries and the Disposal of Books," 8 Sept. 2000, 17; Martin
Dewhirst, "Libraries and the Disposal of Books," 8 Sept. 2000, 17;
David Pearson, "Libraries and the Disposal of Books," 8 Sept.
2000, 17; Lynne Brindley, "Pulp Fiction about the BL," 17 Nov.
2000, 15; G. Thomas Tanselle, "Not the Real Thing," 24 Aug.
2001, 14; Lynne Brindley, "The British Library's Newspapers,"
31 Aug. 2001, 15; Paul Banks, "The British Library and Access
to the Past," 7 Sept. 2001, 17; G. Thomas Tanselle, "The British
Library," 14 Sept. 2001, 17; Lynne Brindley, "The British Library,"
14 Sept. 2001, 17.
The very recognition that books are perhaps our most common artifacts
from the past has created a problem, one that passenger pigeons also faced.
Because printed artifacts are plentiful, individual copies often are thought
to be expendable. We have seen the ramifications vividly with newspapers,
as libraries desiring to replace bulky volumes with compact microfilms turn
for justification to union lists that report many original sets elsewhere, not
realizing that those other libraries have used the same reasoning and have
likewise discarded their originals. My final proposal is one that also could
have begun the list, for it speaks to a fundamental question: should original
printed artifacts be saved? The most widespread airing this question has
ever had was generated by Nicolson Baker's article "Deadline" in the New
Yorker of 24 July 2000 and his book Double Fold the following year. The
starting point of Baker's concern was the British Library's disposal of 60,000
volumes of foreign newspapers, a puzzling reversal of the trend elsewhere
in the library world to integrate far-flung holdings, as through international
union catalogues. A convenient overview of issues involved appears in a
series of contributions to the Times Literary Supplement from August 2000
to September 2001.
Those articles and letters began with a two-page "Commentary" by the
noted scholar and TLS regular Henry Woudhuysen entitled "Vandals of
Colindale." In it he surveyed the British Library's activities, Baker's largely
unsuccessful efforts to save the volumes, and some questions such dispersals
raise. His account touched off related contributions over the next year, including
from Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, and
from scholar G. Thomas Tanselle. Brindley's first response, "Pulp Fiction
the medium in which some of the discarded papers were retained: its purported
durability, its low storage cost, and its reproducibility. She added,
however, "We appreciate that in some cases there are elements of colour, a
feel of the paper, or fine detail, which will not be captured on microfilm"—
not identifying cases in which microfilm would capture, say, "a feel of the
paper," and in any event implying that access to such characteristics is an
extraneous luxury rather than essential to all readers for understanding
those documents in full. Tanselle addressed the most frequently heard justification
for not preserving originals: financial constraints. In "The British
Library," he pointed out that "Budgets reflect the priorities of the moment;
when there is enough interest in spending money differently, budgets change."
Tanselle also talks directly about the importance of original artifacts.
His words from "Not the Real Thing" are worth quoting here as a succinct
one-paragraph summary of many of the points I have tried to make. He
writes this:
The reasons why reproduced forms of texts can never be fully adequate substitutes
for the originals can be outlined simply, in four statements:
(1) Reproductions of all kinds may be defective or incomplete (problems that
are not necessarily obvious), or they may be partially illegible (as are many old
microfilms now held by libraries); the originals will always be of value as the ultimate
authority for settling the questions that reproductions inevitably raise.
(2) Physical features that are unreproducible or customarily unreproduced—
such as paper, binding, structure of the sewn gatherings, inking—can reveal information
about the production history of a book or periodical, information that
is relevant to assessing how the text got to be what it is.
(3) The unreproducible features of graphic design are part of the evidence
readers need for understanding how the content of the text was regarded by the
publisher (who chose to present the work this way), and by the original readers (who
responded to these features along with the words); without those details, one is
deprived of part of the experience of gaining historical understanding.
(4) Some verbal works make use of visual effects that can no more be satisfactorily
reproduced for all purposes than can other works of visual art; furthermore,
knowing when one is in the presence of such a work may require seeing the original.
Though D. F. McKenzie did not always hold the bibliographical analysis
of printed artifacts in the highest regard, he nonetheless provided one of the
most eloquent expressions of the importance of original artifacts. Here is
what he said in his Bibliographical Society Centenary Lecture "What's Past
is Prologue" in 1992:
Once we accept the premise that the forms themselves encode the history of their
production, it follows that to abstract what we're told is their `verbal information
content' by transferring it to another medium is to contradict the very assumption
that the artefact is the product of a distinctive complex of materials, labour, and
mentality. As we've seen, even blank books are far from uninformative. Any simulation
(including re-presentation in a database—a copy of a copy) is an impoverishment,
a theft of evidence, a denial of more exact and immediate visual and tactile
the varying historical conditions of their successive realisations. (p. 24)
It is difficult to know what else to say after two such lucid statements
about the significance of books in human experience. I will, therefore, simply
conclude with this reiteration: printed artifacts lie at the core of book
history, and keeping them as the focal point not only can give coherence to
the field but also can stimulate the richest development of it as a means for
understanding cultural and social evolution. How might we best read book
history? By going to the books.
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