Vandals in the Stacks?: A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries

Libraries and archives have violated their public trust, argues Nicholson Baker in his controversial book Double Fold, by destroying traditional books, newspapers, and other paper-based collections. Baker's powerful and persuasive book is wrong and misleading, and Cox critiques it point by point, questioning his research, his assumptions, and his arguments about why and how newspapers, books, and other collections are selected and maintained.

Double Fold, which reads like a history of librar...