SOURCE: Kniffel, Leonard. “Nicholson Baker Returns in Prose and Prank.” American Libraries 32, no. 4 (April 2001): 28-9.

In the following essay, Kniffel discusses Double Fold and Baker's efforts to preserve historical newspaper collections from destruction.

Author and activist Nicholson Baker has again taken aim at library preservation practices—twice. Once for real, in a new book, and once as the butt of a hoax perpetrated by someone he calls “a misguided supporter.”

Baker's new book, Double Fold, published this month by Random House, is a scathing assessment of the state of newspaper and book preservation. He is incensed by libraries' rush to embrace space-saving technology at the expense of unique print originals and particularly by the wanton discarding of newspapers after they have been microfilmed, based on an exaggeration of their fragility.

“Libraries that receive public money should as a condition of funding be required to publish monthly lists of...