forgotten forebears: concerns with preservation, 1876 to world war i

Forgotten Forebears: Concerns with Preservation, 1876 to World War IAuthor(s): Larry McDonaldSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Fall, 1990), pp. 483-495Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542287 .

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Forgotten Forebears: Concerns with Preservation, 1876 to World War I

Larry McDonald

Preservation has become increasingly important as libraries grapple with the

problems of maintaining their collections. Although it has recently become

much more visible, there has been a long tradition of seeking ways to extend

the useful life of books. This paper considers a neglected area of library his

tory by examining the degree of preservation awareness from the late nine

teenth century to World War I.

... for the books that are being made to

day will perish in a few years. They are

brought into the world with a principle of

decay in every leaf, and the cycle that the

materials travel before they reach again the dust from which they came has been

greatly reduced.1

Preservation in the broadest sense is the entire range of activity that seeks

to maintain library materials to ensure their continued existence for future

use. Given the emphasis placed on adapting contemporary technologies

and developing new and better techniques, preservation may understand

ably be seen as somewhat of a newcomer; Library Journal recently declared

it "the glamour issue of the library world."2 Few fields emerge full-blown,

however, and preservation is no exception. The present positive atmosphere

of scientific study, reports, and conferences, while heartening in total, did

not develop overnight. Preservation, a field inherently concerned with the

cultural production of the past, is largely and ironically unaware of its own

history.

The Florence flood of November 1966 is perhaps the single most impor tant event in postwar preservation. The devastation caused by the Arno

River served as a catalyst to focus the attention of libraries and the cultural

world in general on the vulnerability of the printed word. The international rescue operation that followed gave graphic evidence of the need for

Libraries and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 4, Fall 1990 ?1990 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713



484 L&C/Forgotten Forebears

cooperative effort and served as a testing ground for new techniques. To

date the modern preservation movement solely from the Florence flood and

its aftermath, however, is facile but inaccurate; it tends to gloss over the

role of individuals such as George Cunha at the Boston Athenaeum and

William Barrow, whose Barrow Research Laboratory did important re

search in lamination, deacidification, and the permanence/durability of

paper in the 1950s and 1960s.

The roots of the present awareness of preservation may in fact be traced

back to a considerably earlier age. The last quarter of the nineteenth cen

tury through World War I, in particular, saw the development of a height ened sense of preservation, articulated in both the professional and popular

press of the day. The year 1876 is a natural starting point, for other than merely patriotic

reasons: it conventionally marks the beginning of the modern era of Ameri

can librarianship. It may be viewed as an annus mirabilis that gave birth to

several major library institutions that remain influential today. Melvil Dewey

published the first edition of his Decimal Classification, he and R. R. Bow

ker introduced the American Library Journal (shortened to the more inclusive

Library Journal the following year), and the first national conference met in

Philadelphia to form the American Library Association.

The forces initiated in 1876 gained momentum in the following years; reference service, classification, cataloging, and library architecture,

among others, were all significantly transformed by the new atmosphere of creativity and initiative. Librarians were pioneers^?and preservation

was an important adjunct of their efforts to expand the purely custodial

function of libraries.

The period under consideration was marked by a

growing awareness,

aided by fledgling but increasing scientific experimentation, that books

were vulnerable to many agents of decay. Problems were identified, solu

tions proposed, implemented, and often abandoned, only to reappear in

later years after having been eclipsed by more pressing concerns. Interest

was sometimes cyclical and developments occurred on several fronts.

Although the occasional prophet was heard by mid-century and even

earlier,3 the 1870s saw the beginning of official statements of concern about

deterioration as the effects of wood pulp and chemicals in paper manu

facture, collection growth, and freer circulation became more apparent.

The monumental Public Libraries in the United States of America, a far-reaching and influential report on almost every facet of contemporary libraries,

devoted a chapter to preservation. Ainsworth Spofford declared with the

authoritative voice of his position as Librarian of Congress that there was

"no subject more important in the administration of a public library than

the binding and preservation of the volumes."4 The initial conference of

the nascent American Library Association considered the problem severe



485

enough to warrant a session on book disintegration. As reported in the

first volume of Library Journal* leaders such as Charles Cutter, Justin Winsor, and William Poole discussed possible causes. They identified gas

and heat as prime factors, exacerbated by the physical design of many libraries. The subject

was also considered at an international conference

held the following year at which a plea was made for a joint committee of

librarians and chemists to examine book deterioration and library build

ings.6 Several years were to elapse, however, before the suggestion was

acted on.

One of the most influential of Victorian works on book deterioration, The Enemies of Books by William Blades, a printer and bibliographer, ap

peared in 1880. It provided a colorful description of the foes, both environ

mental (fire, water, dust, bookworms) and human (ignorance, binders,

collectors), that attack books. Throughout, Blades used anecdotes and

illustrations to underscore the seriousness of the threat. He showed an

uncommon sensitivity to the importance of original bindings and advocated

protective boxing as an alternative to rebinding. The Enemies of Books ap

peared in no fewer than ten editions during the next two decades and helped to extend coverage of preservation concerns to the popular press.7

Inappropriate library design was a recurrent theme; Poole, for example,

returned to the dilemma of buildings designed for architectural effect rather than practical needs in an address to the 1881 ALA conference in Washing ton.8 He pointed out the folly of placing books in galleries surrounding an

open hall rising several floors. The design wasted both space and staff time; a greater drawback was the way it facilitated deterioration. The galleried

library functioned essentially as a chimney with the heat rising level by level to dry up the oil in leather and destroy bindings. Poole erroneously

believed that books could not "live" where people could not live, but he did recognize that books should be shelved in the coolest part of a library rather than on multilevel stacks around an atrium. As director, Poole was

able to influence the design of the Newberry Library, constructed a few

years later.

Increased attention was paid in the following decades to the functional

design of libraries from an environmental and preservation perspective. The extension and reconstruction of the Pittsburgh Public Library, for

example, were planned to counteract the notorious pollution of the steel

mills. In order to house books in as pure an environment as possible, the

stack area was physically separated from the rest of the library and outfitted with the latest technological advances. Special ventilation equipment used an

air-washing apparatus to clean the air while hermetically sealed windows

reduced the flow of external polluted air.9 Related to the structural inadequacies of many nineteenth-century libraries

were the problems of gas, heat, and light as factors in the deterioration of




books. Several sets of tests were done in the 1870s and 1880s that tended to document previously anecdotal evidence that the gas atmosphere of

libraries was a major culprit. Experiments such as those performed by

Church, Nichols, and Woodward compared old leathers with new to de termine if deterioration was caused only by the high temperatures of the coal gas used for heating and lighting or if the products of combustion were an additional danger.10 These early studies demonstrated that, while both

played a part, the sulphur absorbed by leather from the burning of gas was

probably the greatest single cause of deterioration. Publication of the results of these and similar tests increased librarians' awareness of the serious

difficulties to be faced.

Given the harmful effects of coal gas as a source of illumination, libraries were

quick to accept electricity as a

significant environmental improve ment. Even this advance, however, was

early recognized in some quarters as also presenting problems. The 1887 ALA conference debated reports that a library in Vienna had noticed that electric light changed the color of paper made from wood pulp.11 Although acknowledging that, if the harmful effects of gas were surpassed by new dangers from electricity, the

fact should be made known, the leaders of the profession were clearly skep

tical. Dewey, for one, flatly claimed that electricity was infinitely better than any use of gas. A suggestion was made that libraries place small cur

tains over each shelf of books.

The notable Mr. Poole, by this time president of ALA, declared that the only thing better than electricity was

sunlight and that whatever ap

plied to one applied to the other. He could not have known that the passage of less than two decades would confirm his words but in a way quite dif ferent than he had intended. A. Seymour-Jones found that exposure to

daylight caused decay in old bindings and conducted experiments to deter mine if glass pale enough for use in library windows provided useful pro tection.12 Although various kinds of leather suffered different degrees of

darkening, the same kinds of light caused the darkening. He found that

ultraviolet light affected leather and suggested glass tinted with uranium!

A more sensible solution recommended that library windows exposed to

direct sunlight be protected with suitable transparent glass to protect books.

Although the employment of science to solve library problems lent a

degree of authority, it was not warmly received in all quarters. At least

one observer was noticeably less than enthusiastic and offered the following

pragmatic advice:

In relation to leather bindings all the scientific experiments simply prove what every librarian of experience has always known, viz, that

the heat generated from gas will injure leather if the books are stored

in galleries where the full force of the heat is concentrated. The moral



487

of which is (1) As heat ascends, don't have any galleries (2) If you must have galleries, bind in buckram (3) Use electricity in place of

gas (4) If you can't afford electricity, weed out your books that are no longer read, and put them on the top galleries: if they are not read,

the sooner they

are cremated the better.13

The problem of deteriorating leather bindings was a question that

received a great deal of attention through the 1890s and into the early years of the twentieth century. While previous studies had focused on en

vironmental factors such as excessive heat, harmful light, and dangerous chemical reactions from burning coal gas, concern was broadened to include

the nature of leather itself and the various processes to which it was sub

jected. Attention shifted in part from the library to the manufacturer. The appearance of the report of the Committee on Leather for Book

binding in 1901 (enlarged edition, 1905) was a benchmark in the study of

the durability of leather.14 The report found that leather of all periods had some evidence of decay, but 1830 formed a kind of dividing line. Leather

before that date often suffered from "old" red decay and was hard and brittle. Post-1830 bindings frequently had "new" red decay in which the leather fell into a fine dust. There were three major causes of this decay: the treatment of the leather for binding weakened it, binding methods

were faulty, and the care of leatherbound books was inadequate. Manu

facturing processes (stronger tanning materials, use of sulphuric and other

mineral acids for bleaching and dyeing, and the practice of splitting, strip ping, and embossing skins) were principally responsible for the decay of

modern leather. In binding, leather was often pared too thinly and stretched too much, and its fiber weakened. Binding practices placed stress unevenly and faulty construction in general was responsible for much of the lack of

durability of modern leather bindings. On environmental conditions, the report found that gas fumes remained

the most damaging influence because of sulphurous acid. Other factors

included sunlight, heat, moisture, dust, dampness, and lack of ventilation.

The report concluded with a number of "Hints to owners and keepers of

libraries'' to lessen the amount of* damage done to books. It was frequently

discussed at meetings of library associations and spawned numerous arti

cles. Leather manufacturers, assigned approximately two-thirds of the

blame for the condition of modern leather, were not as enthusiastic. Even

Leather Trades Review noted that little had been heard about the report from the leather industry and commented that

*' as usual the leather trade put the whole thing down to the extreme views held by faddists."15

The interest stimulated by the 1905 report remained high, as evidenced

by the annual reports of the Committee on Leather and Book-Binding. Although some improvements were made in the quality of leathers, the




results left much to be desired. The 1909 report, for example, regretted the difficulty of obtaining American leather conforming to the Society of

Arts standard.16 The 1913 report approvingly noted that several firms

specialized in acid-free leather and Government Printing Office tenders

required a certain amount of such leather. These were viewed as encourag

ing signs that future leather would not disintegrate as rapidly

as much past

leather had.17 The 1914 report pointed out that while acid-free leather

would last longer, how much longer was unknown. More discouragingly,

several leathers advertised as acid-free were found to contain as much as

1 percent free sulphuric acid.18 The pattern of hopes raised and dashed is

only too familiar.

The preoccupation of the period with leather bindings, to the neglect of

cloth, was virtually complete. A single article dealing with cloth provided statistics on the number of times clothbound books circulated before requir

ing binding. American cloth bindings were found to be 50 percent better

wearing than English bindings, perhaps reflecting an English view of cloth as a temporary binding.19

Although great emphasis was placed on the problem of bindings, paper was not entirely neglected. In 1898 the Committee on the Deterioration of

Paper issued its report, ironically on paper that has deteriorated badly. The

report examined factors such as sizing, loading, and texture with recom

mendations on how each stage of the papermaking process might be altered

to improve quality. It also specified a standard for paper required for pub lications of permanent value. Of more interest than the report itself as an

indication of the state of late-nineteenth-century knowledge are the ap

pended English abstracts of studies done at the Imperial Testing Institution

of Berlin. Many of these dealt with subjects that remain matters of concern,

for example, three studies from 1895: "Durability of Papers Containing Chemical Cellulose," "Influence of Moisture upon the Strength of Paper," and "Physical Alterations in Paper by Heat and Moisture." Some studies

were absolute in their recommendations, as was "The Durability of the

Printing Paper of the Present Day" (1887):

In the meantime the author recommends all publishers to absolutely refuse paper containing mechanical wood pulp; and where especial value is attached to the durability of the paper they require for any

publication, to demand that it shall be made from linen and cotton

fibres alone. Only by such a stipulation can they ensure that the books

of the present day shall be preserved in a readable condition for as

long a

period as those of our ancestors.20

The year 1887 was also notable as the time when the International Con

ference for the Preservation and Restoration of Manuscripts was held at



489

St. Gall, Switzerland. The conference was organized by the prefect of the

Vatican Library to discuss the deterioration of paper, especially wood pulp

paper already recognized as susceptible to rapid decay. Despite the inter

national nature of the conference, it received surprisingly little attention

in the library press; Library Journal, for example, was content to restrict its

coverage to a single paragraph, reprinted from the Nation. The conference

was instrumental in stimulating several libraries to establish permanent conservation laboratories.

The threat posed by the decline in paper quality was officially acknowl

edged by the United States government when the Leather and Paper Laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry was authorized to investigate the

subject of durable papers for government purposes. The importance of

preserving government records at all levels (state, county, municipal, as

well as federal) by printing them on the most durable paper possible was

explicitly recognized. The committee examined thousands of samples and

recommended in its final report of 1909 that the government purchase all

of its paper on the basis of complete and definite specifications.21 The Joint Committee of Congress on Printing subsequently adopted the report in

1911 to control all government supplies of paper, printing, and binding materials, including

a standard specification for paper that would "endure

indefinitely." Such paper was to be limited to permanent publications for

government use or depository libraries. Use of permanent paper was not

seen as extensive, but as nonetheless serving a valuable purpose. Important

historical publications of the government, including its original scientific

contributions, were to be printed on permanent paper.

The decline of newsprint quality was another area of serious concern to

early-twentieth-century librarians. Newspapers serve a unique function as

a contemporary record of events and attitudes, of great importance to

historians. The deterioration of newspapers posed a special problem in

premicroform days. Unlike books, which might be replaced with consider able effort, newspaper files usually existed in only

a few repositories; even

the newspaper publishers did not maintain complete backfiles. The matter was brought to the attention of the 1910 ALA annual conference in a report on a

Brooklyn Public Library survey of newspapers.22 Publishers were

asked if a better quality of paper was used for extra copies for their own

files and what means were taken to preserve files in their own offices. The

results were disappointing but not surprising: no special paper was used and no means were taken to preserve those in the worst condition. For

financial reasons, publishers were not inclined to print a special edition on

paper suitable for binding. Commercial reprinting of the valuable material

already printed on cheap newsprint was

rejected as too expensive; new

chemical developments such as cellit offered some faint hope. The ALA response was to form a committee to examine the problem in




greater detail. The reports of the resulting Committee on the Deterioration

of Newsprint Paper over the following few years chart developments in this area. The committee met in 1912 with New York publishers to consider

methods of preserving bound volumes of newspapers. The possibility of

printing extra copies of current issues on a better grade of paper, an idea

that had been voiced at least since the days of Justin Winsor in the 1870s, was also considered. At the time only an obscure midwestern paper, the

Red Wing Republic (Minnesota), printed higher-quality copies for deposit in the state historical society. In 1913 the Brooklyn Eagle began to print a

limited edition on 75 percent rag paper for preservation purposes. The

experiment was not a success

(there were only fourteen subscribers and the

loss to the publisher for newspaper stock alone was $2,150) and was ter

minated in 1914.

The search for alternative methods of preserving newspaper continued.

In an address to journalism professors at Columbia University, H. M.

Lydenberg reported on the efforts of the New York Public Library.23 Trial

use of Zapon had seemed promising, but the outbreak of war cut off the

supply. Japanese tissue paper was successful, but at $35 a volume or $420

for an ordinary daily bound one month to a volume, the cost was prohibi

tive?one shudders to consider the price in current dollars.

By 1918 Lydenberg had come to believe that sooner or later newspapers would disappear from large libraries such as NYPL and be preserved for

a longer period only in such collections as the American Antiquarian Society

where use was moderate and supervised. This pessimistic prediction

brought a firm rejoinder from the Wisconsin Historical Library: "If, how

ever, we assume that the papers are good for only

a century of use before

their disintegration, they may still be regarded as about as permanent as

anything in this world of change, and the omission to preserve them for

fear that they will sometime decay, would seem to constitute an unreason

able case of prudence on the part of libraries."24

Conservation of books, in the sense of restoration or repair, was almost

a cottage industry of sorts. The early literature is replete with a remarkable

variety of suggestions and recipes for all manner of varnishes, solvents,

dyes, and miscellaneous concoctions. The technical details are of little

interest other than to indicate the range of preparations in vogue at one

time or another: alum bath as a fireproofing material, glue made from

shavings of white soap, gasoline as a cleaner for covers, spirits of wine,

tobacco tea as a tint, and so forth. To these homemade preparations that

have something of the snake-oil about them must be added commercial

products such as Zapon, vellucent, Zapalac, and celletron, introduced

with great fanfare but soon discredited. In contemplating the uneven his

tory of book repair, Dibdin's comment on the use of hydrochloric acid to

whiten leaves serves as a useful caution: "Oh, most foul and treacherous



491

application of chemical knowledge!?a few short years glide away?when

we open our supposed spotless treasures and find them brittle, rotten and

shrinking even at the light of day."25 Librarians at the turn of the century were offered guidance on conser

vation matters by two influential leaders: Spofford's A Book for All Readers

and Dana's Notes on Bookbinding for Libraries.26 Spofford's book originated as a series of lectures for the library school at Columbian College (later

George Washington University). "The Enemies of Books" chapter re

traced much of the ground covered by Blades twenty years previously; its

inclusion, however, indicated that library school students were introduced

to the main preservation concerns. Chapter 6, "The Restoration and Re

clamation of Books," more directly addressed conservation. It emphasized

the importance of familiarity with repair processes and offered practical

suggestions for repairing common problems such as broken corners, torn

pages, and loose signatures. Spofford was

clearly aware of the political

value of a well-organized conservation program:

Convince the library directors, by incessant care of the condition of

the books, that you are not only a fit, but an indispensable custodian

of them. Let them see your methods of preserving and restoring, and

they will be induced to give you every facility of which you stand in

need. Show them how the cost of binding or re-buying many books can be saved by timely repair within the library, and then ask for

another assistant to be always employed in such work at very moder

ate cost. Library directors and trustees are commonly intensely

practical men, and quick to see into the heart of good management.27

Unlike Spofford, Dana was not in favor of general in-house repair. His

chapter on repairing books in Notes on Bookbinding for Libraries begins: "The universal rule in this matter is, don't" (p. 99). He acknowledged excep tions but believed poorly executed repairs were both damaging and expen

sive. In the absence of skilled staff familiar with book structures and papers, he advised binding and used a series of aphorisms such as "Mend sparingly; rebind early" (p. 102) and "Parsimony in rebinding is a library thief

(p. 104). Dana focused on binding as the major conservation issue confronting

libraries. Although decrying the lack of standards and specifications, Dana

repeatedly noted his suggestions were not to be taken as authoritative. He

stressed that libraries differ in their needs and emphasized that appropriate

binding decisions should be made in light of a particular library's acquisi tion policy, use patterns, and clientele. Sections on rebinding, binding styles for different types of books, pamphlets, leather, and book cloths increased the usefulness of the book.




Another fertile area for writing involved what might generically be termed

library housekeeping. These articles typically carried some variant of "The Care of Books" in their titles.28 They sought to promote practices that would prolong the life of a book. The advice was usually sound?keeping shelves orderly to reduce broken spines, for example?but somewhat self

evident.

From a philosophical point of view, the central question is what merits

preservation; the "how" is a series of separate problems. Obviously every

thing cannot be saved and much will perish, in effect, through default.

That this was understood early on is apparent from an incident that is little more than a minor footnote historically but illustrates the fundamental

issues involved. In October 1911 Lord Rosebery, a former Liberal prime minister, opened a new library in Glasgow with a

speech that aroused

considerable controversy. In looking at the collection, he wondered aloud

how much of it would ever be used and doubted the validity of maintaining such a mass of decay: "... folios which our generation cannot handle,

novels as vapid as soda-water which has been open for a week, bales of ser

mons which have given satisfaction to no one but their authors, collections

of political speeches even more evanescent than the sermons, bales of for

gotten science, superseded history, biographies of people that nobody cares

about . . ."29

Rosebery developed further an analogy of books as living organisms with

natural lifespans, many of which should not be artificially extended:

if the number of living books is exceedingly small in proportion to

the whole, what a huge cemetery of dead books or books half alive

is represented by a great library like this. Of course, some of them are absolutely dead books that no human being out of a madhouse

would ask for. Some are semi-living, some strayed reveller or wan

dering student may ask for them at some heedless or too curious a

moment. The depressing thought to me in entering a great library of that kind is that, in the main, most of the books are dead.30

Reaction to such extreme views was predictable: librarians wrote im

passioned responses to his misunderstanding of the function of libraries in

supporting arcane research of all sorts. Then, as now, to remove books?

either by weeding or de facto by lack of preservation?was a calculated

gamble. Rosebery's views were not popular but they did raise questions

that will increasingly be grappled with as the preservation movement

matures.

As if anticipating the objections voiced by Rosebery, Spofford had used

the building of the new Library of Congress to argue the library's obliga tion to preserve both popular and scholarly works:



493

It is easy to say that the greater part of the books and periodicals thus acquired are trash; but it is to be considered that very substantial reasons can be urged why one

library should preserve the entire

product of the American press, irrespective of intrinsic value ... all

American books should be preserved as models. . . . What is pro

nounced trash to-day may have an unexpected value hereafter, and

the unconsidered trifles of the press of the nineteenth century may

prove highly curious and interesting to the twentieth, an example of what the ancestors of that day wrote and thought about.31

Perhaps the most articulate and reasoned response was provided by

another Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, also at the dedication of a new library, that of the University of California. He gave a philosophical discourse on the role of libraries in preserving the records of civilization

and contrasted the situation of libraries with that of museums:

A museum may be the custodian of it [civilization]; and such a museum will gather and conserve it to the most minute fragment?

bone, ornament, implement?counting each precious, with no hier

archy amongst them; and the scientist will study them with an impar tial zeal as if, through their uses, their performance will be passed; they are all in a sense vital. For they are all regarded as

significant

expressions of man, and as contributing to that greatest of science

within the attainable studies of man?man himself.

But while this interest is accepted as warrantable in the case of

every object and every process in nature, and in the case of man, of

most monuments left by him, and of most relics, there is a point at

which it demurs; it accepts the content of the museum, but it begins to hesitate at the contents of the library.

. . .

No one questions this; no one doubts that books include all this; no one opposes the establishment of libraries which enable the bene fits of books to be conserved, to be made accessible and to be diffused.

But in the case of books distinctions are drawn which are not drawn

in the case of other subject matter. A monument is preserved and

studied, however crude, ineffective or inartistic its form. Other relics are not rejected because they represent a folly, a perverse fancy or a

mere temporary fashion. But a book is to be subjected to a severer

test. . . .32

The extract is particularly germane because of the close ties between the two types of cultural institutions. Modern library preservation derives

much of both its ethos and its inspiration from museum preservation. Explicitly or implicitly, many of the fundamental principles on which




library preservation is based are drawn from the museum world. While

this initial influence has been overwhelmingly beneficial, the two differ, as Putnam points out, in nature and expectations.

In examining the early modern literature on preservation, one is struck

by the immediate parallels with the present: many of the same issues re

main a concern today. The pattern of identifying problems, developing and applying solutions, and modifying them on the basis of experience is

familiar. The writings often seem, and indeed are, unsophisticated; the

challenge is to avoid approaching them with a patronizing attitude. Before

dismissing them out-of-hand as totally irrelevant because of their age and

simplicity, it is instructive to consider that contemporary efforts might one

day be judged equally harshly in the light of a more advanced era. Ulti

mately, the most enduring legacy of these long-forgotton works may be in

illustrating the wisdom of cultivating both an informed mind and a healthy

skepticism. In the field of preservation, the "quick fix" is illusory.

Notes

1. Rossiter Johnson, "Inferior Paper a Menace to the Permanency of Litera

ture," New York World (n.d.), reprinted in Library Journal 16 (1891): 241.

2. GraceAnne A. DeCandido, "Library Directions in 1988," Library Journal

114(1989): 52. 3. Michael Faraday's 1843 experiments on deteriorating bindings and sulphur

dioxide in the environment are among the most prominent. 4. Ainsworth Rand Spofford, "Binding and Preservation of Books," in Public

Libraries in the United States of America, Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Education

Special Report, part I (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1876; reprint, Champaign:

University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Service, 1966), p. 673.

5. "Injuries from Gas and Heat," Library Journal 1 (1876): 124-125.

6. Guillaume Depping, "Note on Library-Buildings," in Transactions and Pro

ceedings of the Conference of Librarians Held in London, October 1877, ed. Edward B.

Nicholson and Henry R. Tedder (London: Chiswiek Press, 1879), p. 50.

7. E. Butler, "Sufferings and Death of Books," Living Age 187 (1890): 823-824;

Willard Austen, "Of Bookworms," National (1896): 305; and W. Austen, "Book

worms in Fact and Fancy," Popular Science 55 (1899): 240-248, among others.

8. W. F. Poole, "The Construction of Library Buildings," Library Journal 6

(1891): 69-77. 9. Engineering Record (October 1906), as reported in Robert D. MacLeod, "The

Preservation of Books in Libraries," Library World n.s. 11 (1909): 257.

10. A. H. Church, "Gas-Light and Bindings," Chemical News 36 (1877): 179, re

printed in Library Journal 3 (1878): 64; William R. Nichols, "On the Deterioration

of Library Bindings," Library Journal 4 (1879): 435-438; and C.J. Woodward, "A

Preliminary Experimental Inquiry as to the Action of Burning-Gas on Leather

Used for Book-Binding," Library Journal 12 (1887): 321-322.

11. "Action of Electric Light on Paper," Library Journal 12 (1887): 428-429.

12. A. Seymour-Jones, "On the Glazing of Libraries, with Reference to the

Chemical Action of Light upon Leather," Library Association Record^ (1906): 641

646.



495

13. J. Schwartz, "The 'Burning' Question," Library Journal 13 (1888): 278.

14. Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, Com

mittee on Leather for Bookbinding, Report, ed. Viscount Cobham and Henry True

man Wood (London: G. Bell, 1905). 15. Cyril Davenport and E. Wundham Hulme, "The Question of Bookbinding

Leather," Leather Trades Review 27 (April 1904), reprinted in Library Association

Record 6 (1904): 277. 16. "Bookbinding Committee Report," Bulletin of the American Library Association

3 (1909): 223-224. 17. "Bookbinding Committee Report," Bulletin of the American Library Association

7(1913): 113-114. 18. "Committee on Book Binding," Bulletin of the American Library Association 8

(1914): 107-109. 19. W. I. Fletcher, "Durability of Cloth Bindings," Library Journal 18 (1893): 40.

20. Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, Com

mittee on the Deterioration of Paper, Report (London: W. Trounce, 1898), p. 9.

21. H. W. Wiley and C. Hart Merriam, Durability and Economy in Papers for Per

manent Records, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Report no. 89 (Washington, D.C: GPO,

1909). 22. Frank P. Hill, "The Deterioration of Newspaper Paper," Bulletin of the

American Library Association 4 (1910): 675-678.

23. H. M. Lydenberg, "Preservation of Modern Newspaper Files," Library

Journal 40 (1915): 240-242. 24. M. M. Quaife, "A Difference of Opinion," Public Libraries 23 (1918): 423.

25. Quoted by Thomas W. Huck, "Book Pests and Book and Print Restoration,"

Library Association Record 15 (1913): 171. 26. Ainsworth Rand Spofford, A Book for All Readers: Designed as an Aid to the

Collection, Use and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private Libraries

(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1900); John Cotton Dana, Notes on Bookbinding for Libraries (Chicago: Library Bureau, 1906).

27. Spofford, A Book for All Readers, p. 121.

28. Representative examples include Alice B. Kroeger, "The Care of Books," Public Libraries 8 (1903): 319-321; Cornelia Marvin, "The Care of Books," Wiscon

sin Library Bulletin 1 (May 1905): 34-36; and Ernest W. Neesham, "Care of Books,"

Library World n.s. 11 (July 1908): 32-33.

29. Quoted by J. D. S. Stewart, "Cemeteries or Workshops?" Library World n.s. 14 (1911): 129; E. Charteris notes that, although "he was an omnivorous

reader in the field of biography, history, and memoirs . . . [he] concerned himself

little with modern literature save in so far as it threw light on aspects of the past." (Dictionary of National Biography: 1922-1930 [London: Oxford University Press,

1937], p. 696). 30. Stewart, "Cemeteries or Workshops?" p. 129.

31. Ainsworth Rand Spofford, "The Function of a National Library," in Hand

book of the New Library of Congress, ed. Herbert Small (Boston: Curtis and Cameron,

1899), p. 126. 32. Herbert Putnam, "The Quick in the 'Dead,'

" Bulletin of the New Hampshire

Public Libraries n.s. 9 (1913): 186.



forgotten forebears: concerns with preservation, 1876 to world war i

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