Orphaned newspapers find a home

Nicholson Baker, in his 2001 book Double Fold, mercilessly excorciated librarians and archivists who, according to Baker, have abandoned their role as preservers of the published record, especially long print runs of old newspapers and magazines, in favor of flashy but flawed modern technologies such as microfilm and electronic "archives", or in many cases in favor of simply dumping everything that wasn't new and "sexy" into landfills with no attention whatsoever to the preservation of the historical record. Microfilmed copies are bedeviled by missing pages, poorly photographed images, loss of color information, and awkward means of access; electronic images may have all of the above problems, plus extortionately high subscription rates. Both have other problems as well.

Unlike many activists, though, Baker had both the will and the means to do something substantive about his bete noire, and when he heard of an extensive collection of 19th-century American newspapers that was being discarded by the British Library, he took action to acquire them and preserve them.

In thanks, the snobs of the library world sneered at him. He was roundly derided as a meddling outsider and a crank. Comfortably ensconced in their offices and committees and roundtables, the library administrators who have the time and job security to comment publicly upon such things snickered knowingly that he'd never find a home for them, that he was a mere dilettante who would soon lose interest, that he'd get tired of paying storage bills, that the newspapers would never be publicly accessible.

Wrong. (See also here, here, here.)