Double Fold

by Nicholson Baker

  20. “The time drivers”: See NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 79.

  21. “Shortly after the water injection”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 6.

  22. “[Name whited out] has been applying pressure”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 80. A memo of December 5, 1985, reporting the “Incident at Magnetic Test Quiet Lab 306” to a NASA manager ends thus: “Any inquiries concerning this incident should be referred to Dr. Peter Sparks, Library of Congress, 202-287-5213.” NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 49.

  23. Before NASA had completed its investigation: NASA had produced an interim report on the December 5 explosion, but not a final one, when the second explosion took place. “By February 14, 1986, Mr. Marriott’s group was well into the investigation of the December 5, 1985, mishap and verbal reports had been provided to the Director of Engineering, and an interim written report was provided on January 17, 1986” (NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 15). One respondent stated that he was “upset that they were working out at building 306 before the report from the December 5, 1985, Accident Review Board was released” (p. 92). The Library of Congress asserted that the DEZ facility was shut down after the “fire” in December “pending a review of the cause of the fire.” Cleanup began, the library claimed, “following completion of the review,” whereupon the “second incident occurred.” Library of Congress, “Library’s Book Deacidification Program Moves Forward Following Review of Incidents and Pilot Plant,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:27 (July 7, 1986).

  24. “disenchanted” electrician: There were, he said, “too many people giving orders without following normal procedures.” NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 91. “Before the December 5 fire,” the electrician “had not known that DEZ could explode” (p. 92).

  25. a substantial volume: “After the December 5, 1985 fire, it was general knowledge that DEZ was in the system,” according to one interviewee. NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 95.

  26. “black goop”: NASA, Accident Investigation, pp. 9, 110.

  27. copper elbow pipe: NASA, Accident Investigation, pp. 11, 93.

  28. too hot to touch: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 109.

  29. Northrup did not inform NASA: NASA, Accident Investigation, pp. 25–26.

  30. “the walls were blown apart”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 14.

  31. “The violence of the explosion”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 36.

  32. there were no relief valves: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 28.

  33. “We’re going to blow it”: Welsh, phone interview, March 25, 2000.

  34. armored vehicles: Welsh, phone interview, March 25, 2000.

  35. “vast and unprecedented cuts”: Library of Congress, “The Librarian of Congress Testifies Before Appropriations Subcommittee,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:9 (March 3, 1986).

  36. “disassembled by means of shaped”: NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 16.

  37. whoomp: Phone interview with an eyewitness who does not want to be named, April 2000.

  38. “there has never been an important”: Boorstin also formally said good-bye to the members of the house subcommittee during that meeting; he was retiring from the Library of Congress. Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations, Hearings, p. 394.

  39. rats: “The study will expose rats to acute, subchronic, and chronic inhalation of zinc oxide particles at various concentrations in air. . . .An examination of sperm morphology and vaginal cytology will also be performed on specimens in the sub-chronic and chronic studies. Some specimens from the sub-chronic exposures will be mated to study the reproductive and teratogenic effects.” U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 79. The cost of the rat study, performed by the Battelle Memorial Institute, is given on p. 18.

  40. The tests were “inconclusive”: U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 77. In another test, DEZ-treated paper was applied to the skin of guinea pigs and the eyes of rabbits.

  41. optical-disk program: See, for example, William J. Welsh, “The Preservation Challenge,” in Merrill-Oldham and Smith, Library Preservation Program. “In the area of preservation research, the Library of Congress is currently engaged in two promising projects of enormous potential value,” Welsh writes, both of which apply “ultra-high technology to preservation”: diethyl zinc and optical disk.

  42. “On Friday, February 21”: Library of Congress, “Engineering Problems Experienced at Deacidification Test Facility,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:11 (March 17, 1986).

  43. “The Library’s own review”: Library of Congress, “Library’s Book Deacidification Program.” The DEZ technique “is a viable process that can be implemented and handled safely,” according to the article.

  44. “didn’t have the chemical processing experience”: Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations, Hearings, p. 435.

  45. “Dump DEZ”: Karl Nyren, “It’s Time to Dump DEZ,” Library Journal, September 15, 1986.

  46. “danger and unmanageability of DEZ”: Karl Nyren, “DEZ Process.”

  47. Welsh published a rebuttal: William J. Welsh, “In Defense of DEZ: LC’s Perspective,” Library Journal, January 1987.

  48. when it does use DEZ: Scott Eidt told me: “Diethyl zinc wasn’t used a great deal as a Ziegler-Natta catalyst. It was used, as far I remember, and is still used, in dilute hydrocarbon solution, to scavenge out water from the polymerization process—that is, it would react with the water in the solvent and knock it out.” Book Preservation Technologies also resorts to vague language, perhaps in order to avoid mentioning the military uses: “Metal alkyls have been used for many years in a variety of applications. Their major use today is as an intermediate in the manufacturing of polyethylene and polypropylene” (p. 28).

  49. neat and by the ton: “During the course of a year, Texas Alkyls will be trucking 15 to 20, 430-gallon tanks of neat liquid DEZ from their facility in Houston to the full-scale plant site,” U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 71. Stauffer Chemical wrote a letter to the Library of Congress dated April 18, 1985, in which it observed that the rate of gas generation is two orders of magnitude greater for neat diethyl zinc than for DEZ diluted fifty-fifty with a solvent. The letter is paraphrased in NASA, Accident Investigation, p. 144. The gas, mainly ethane, is flammable.

  50. “DEZ is produced”: Welsh, “In Defense of DEZ.”

  51. “DEZ is and always will be”: Koski added, “The cylinder that DEZ is stored in is labelled as pyrophoric but these cylinders are not perpetually in flame either, although [their contents] certainly would be if the valve was cracked open.”

  52. $2.8 million: U.S. Congress, Book Preservation Technologies, p. 18.

  53. “I think the safety questions”: Boyce Rensenberger, “Acid Test: Stalling Self-Destruction in the Stacks,” The Washington Post, August 29, 1988, p. A13, final edition, microfilm.

  54. “were so startling”: Robert J. Milevski, “Mass Deacidification: Effects of Treatment on Library Materials Deacidified by the DEZ and MG-3 Processes,” in The 1992 Book and Paper Group Annual, vol. 11 (Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Conservation, 1992). Milevski became the preservation librarian at Princeton in 1992.

  55. one-hundred-million-dollar twenty-year contracts: Rensenberger, “Acid Test.”

  56. thirty thousand books a week: Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Oversight Hearing, p. 111.

  57. “And if you know Billington”: Billington’s occasional outbursts are described in Linton Weeks, “In a Stack of Troubles: The Librarian of Congress Has Raised Funds. And His Voice. And a Lot of Eyebrows,” The Washington Post, December 27, 1995, p. F1, Nexis. “In August 1995, Billington learned that the U.S. attorney had written him a letter expressing concern about the way book damage was being reported. Someone on the library staff had answered the letter. ‘Unsatisfactorily, and in my name,’ says Billington. ‘He went hysteric,’ says one library official who asked not to be named. Billington rememb
ers that he threw something. He says it may have been a book.”

  58. Alphamat: Nielsen Bainbridge, Alphamat Artcare, www.nielsen-bainbridge.com/bainbridge/html/sparks_testimonial.htm (viewed September 20, 2000).

  59. “strategic information reserve”: Testimony of James Billington, April 19, 1994, before the Senate Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities. Billington disseminated several variations of this speech.

  60. “substituting technology for paper”: James Billington, Library of Congress Information Bulletin, June 15, 1992, excerpted in Commission on Preservation and Access, Newsletter, September 1992. In 1999, Billington told Congress that one of the library’s “key current overriding initiatives” is “providing massive digital access to information and, at the same time, streamlining and re-engineering our handling of access to books and other traditional containers of knowledge.” Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 106th Cong., 1st sess., 1999, p. 120.

  61. Bhabha Atomic Research Center: See the capsule biography accompanying Chandru Shahani and William K. Wilson, “Preservation of Libraries and Archives,” American Scientist, May–June 1987. Bhabha scientists began work on India’s nuclear bomb in 1971, according to Nicholas Berry of the Center for Defense Information (e-mail to author). See also Center for Defense Information, “Building the Indian Bomb,” May 19, 1998, www.cdi.org/issues/testing/inbombfct.htm (viewed August 14, 2000).

  62. “pathetically poor engineering”: Kenneth E. Harris and Chandru J. Shahani, Mass Deacidification: An Initiative to Refine the Diethyl Zinc Process, Library of Congress Preservation Directorate (October 1994), lcweb.loc.gov/preserv/deacid/proceval.htm.

  63. If in fifty years: Jana Kolar notes that “while most treated papers degrade less rapidly, some results of accelerated ageing experiments show an increased degradation of papers whose pH has been changed from the acidic to the alkaline region using deacidification treatment.” Accelerated-aging experiments can, however, supply only directional hints. Jana Kolar, “Mechanism of Autoxidative Degradation of Cellulose,” Restaurator 18 (1997).

  CHAPTER 14 – Bursting at the Seams

  * * *

  1. costs were bundled: Between 1984 and 1994, the Library of Congress spent $5.7 million of the $11.5 million congressional appropriation for the construction of a diethyl-zinc facility, according to General Accounting Office, Financial Statement Audit for the Library of Congress for Fiscal Year 1995. Although they are difficult to document, the overhead costs attributable to diethyl-zinc research and development must be added to that amount.

  2. Landover: Library of Congress, Library of Congress Information Bulletin 35:22 (May 28, 1976).

  3. long-frozen Everyman’s Library edition: F. L. Hudson and C. J. Edwards, “Some Direct Observations on the Aging of Paper,” Paper Technology 7 (1966); cited in Richard Smith, “Paper Impermanence as a Consequence of pH and Storage Conditions,” Library Quarterly 39:2 (April 1969): 183.

  4. Cold War librarians: See Library of Congress, “Welsh Named Deputy Librarian,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 35:4 (January 23, 1976).

  5. “warehouses of little-used material”: William J. Welsh, “Libraries and Librarians: Opportunities and Challenges,” paper presented at the seventh international seminar, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Library Center, Kanazawa, Japan, 1989, in Research Libraries—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, ed. William J. Welsh (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993).

  6. “vastly more than the microfilming”: Welsh, “Library of Congress.”

  7. “Disk storage is attractive”: Welsh, “Library of Congress.”

  8. “the extremely high resolution”: Welsh, “Library of Congress.”

  9. “reproduce items with sufficient quality”: Carl Fleischhauer, “Research Access and Use: The Key Facet of the Nonprint Optical Disk Experiment,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 42:37 (September 12, 1983). Also quoted in Biggar, “Must the Library of Congress Destroy Books.”

  10. reduce the three Library of Congress buildings: The article describes the data-retrieval jukebox that is “humming away” in the basement of the Madison building: “Deputy librarian W.J. Welsh says the jukebox, part of a three-year, $2.1 million pilot program, is the face of the bibliographical future—one that could shrink the library’s entire 80 million item collection into one of the library’s three existing building[s].” Ken Ringle, “Card Catalogue to Be Filed Away; Library Turns to Computers,” The Washington Post, November 13, 1984, p. A1, final edition. See also Ellen Z. Hahn, “The Library of Congress Optical Disk Pilot Program: A Report on the Print Project Activities,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 42:44 (October 31, 1983), which gives space and “compaction” as one of the justifications of the optical-disk program. Hahn writes that “miniaturization in some form” is essential because “the likelihood of building another Library building on Capitol Hill is at best remote.” The scanning will be destructive: “In most cases, the print material, that is, periodicals, will be guillotined and then scanned automatically at a rate of one page every two seconds.” One of the benefits of the optical-disk program, according to a later article, is “the elimination of the not-on-shelf or ‘N.O.S.’ problem”: if you destroy the item in order to scan it, it is no longer part of the collection, and therefore won’t be missing when you look for it. Library of Congress, “Library Announces Public Opening of Access to Optical Disk Technology,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 45:7 (February 17, 1986).

  11. war propaganda: During the war, “a division for the study of propaganda analysis was established. What later became the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services was first set up as the Division of Special Information in the Library of Congress. . . .A War Agencies Collection gave duly accredited representatives of the Government access to materials which, for reasons of security, had to be withheld from the public. . . .Exhibits, broadcasts, lectures were designed to reflect the war aims of the United States. . . .Mr. MacLeish was frequently absent, sometimes for extended periods, first as director of the Office of Facts and Figures, subsequently as assistant director of the Office of War Information.” David C. Mearns, The Story Up to Now: The Library of Congress, 1800–1946 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1947), p. 214.

  12. letter of agreement: The text of the agreement between MacLeish and Donovan is reproduced in William R. Corson, The Armies of Ignorance (New York: Dial, 1977), pp. 141–44n.

  13. “bursting at the seams”: Gurney and Apple, Library of Congress, p. 17.

  14. marble-finned kitsch box: The building “reminds some critics of the monumental architecture of the Third Reich.” Stephen Klaidman, “Cultural Center Problems Are Space, Money, Boredom,” The Washington Post, June 12, 1977, p. B1.

  15. “miniaturiz[ing] existing collections”: Welsh, “Libraries and Librarians.”

  16. “Networking can and should”: Welsh, “Libraries and Librarians.”

  CHAPTER 15 – The Road to Avernus

  * * *

  1. groundless guesswork: “Perhaps the most outrageous of Barrow’s distortions of prior work was his equation of 25 years of natural age to 72 hours in a dry oven at 100ºC., with his use of multiples of 72 hours to represent multiples of 25 years. This must have been based on ruler measurement of freehand lines in charts in one NBS [National Bureau of Standards] study; yet this study, the only direct comparison of natural and accelerated aging available when Barrow introduced his equation, warned explicitly and repeatedly that the four data points on which the charts were based were insufficient for quantitative treatment. Later work has removed all credibility from Barrow’s equation; yet it is apparently still used by some librarians and vendors.” Thomas Conroy, “The Need for a Re-evaluation of the Use of Alum in Book Conservation and the Book Arts,” Book and Paper Group Annual 8 (Washington, D.C.: Book and Paper Group of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1989), p. 14n.

  2. three days in an artif
icial-aging oven: Barrow Research Laboratory, Test Data of Naturally Aged Papers (Richmond, Va.: Barrow Research Laboratory, 1964), p. 21. See also Verner Clapp, “The Story of Permanent/Durable Book Paper, 1115–1970 (part 2),” Scholarly Publishing, April 1971, and Smith, “Paper Impermanence,” p. 186.

  3. Barrow’s results: Deterioration of Book Stock, Causes and Remedies, conducted by W. J. Barrow, ed. Randolph W. Church (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1959), p. 15.

  4. “The research carried out”: Leon J. Stout et al. of the Preservation Committee of the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, “Guaranteeing a Library for the Future,” Restaurator 8:4 (1987).

  5. “Barrow startled the library world”: Rutherford D. Rogers, “Library Preservation: Its Scope, History, and Importance,” in Merrill-Oldham and Smith, Library Preservation Program.

  6. Perhaps all those who, like Peter Sparks: “Library officials say that unless the destruction is stopped, 97 percent of the volumes in the federal government’s premier library—also the world’s largest information storage center—will eventually disintegrate. All other libraries are thought to face the same problem. ‘It’s a very serious problem but, fortunately, we think we’re moving rapidly toward a solution that we think is very promising,’ said Peter G. Sparks, director of the library’s Mass Deacidification Program.” Rensenberger, “Acid Test.”

  7. “From the investigations”: Clapp, Future of the Research Library, p. 87.

  8. hire some statisticians: Council on Library Resources, Sixth Annual Report, p. 22.

  9. “these 1.75 billion pages”: Clapp, Future of the Research Library, p. 27.

  10. Robert N. DuPuis: DuPuis also worked at General Foods. At Philip Morris, he became chairman of the Industry Technical Group of TIRC, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, stalwart funder of pro-cigarette scientific research. Another Philip Morris scientist, John D. Hind, served as a consultant to the Barrow lab; see Barrow Research Laboratory, Permanence/Durability of the Book: A Two-Year Research Program (Richmond: Barrow Research Laboratory, 1963).