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LIBRARY ACTIVIST, NICHOLSON BAKER, TO SPEAK AT OBERLIN COLLEGE NOVEMBER 10
NOVEMBER 2, 2001-- Novelist, essayist, and library activist Nicholson Baker will be the featured speaker following the Friends of the Oberlin College Library annual dinner on Saturday, November 10. Baker will speak about his most recent book, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. His talk, which is open to the public, begins at 8:00 P.M. in the Root Room of the Carnegie Building on the Oberlin College campus.
Double Fold is an impassioned critique of the collection preservation programs of America's research libraries, particularly the Library of Congress. It focuses on the practice of microfilming newspapers and brittle books and discarding the original paper copies. The book has created heated controversy in the research library community.
Baker's public engagement with library issues dates to a 1994 New Yorker article in which he criticized libraries for discarding their card catalogs following the implementation of online systems. In that article he contended that card catalogs contain a wealth of information that is valuable to researchers, information that is not included in their online counterparts.
In 1996 Baker again became engaged in a major library controversy when he criticized the San Francisco public library for discarding a substantial number of older volumes from its collections. The library had withdrawn the volumes because it did not have enough room for the growth of its print collections in a newly constructed central library building.
In addition to his writings on library topics, Baker is the author of five highly regarded novels and a non-fiction work that explores his relationship with John Updike. His novels are The Messinine, Room Temperature, Vox, The Fermata, and The Everlasting Story of Nory.
Media Contact: Scott Wargo
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