Brittle Books Program

In the beginning half of the 20th century it became apparent that the use of acidic wood-pulp paper, common since the 1850s, was causing paper materials to slowly burn. This has been referred to as the slow fire. A statement submitted to the House of Representatives estimated that there were 80 million brittle books in North American libraries, 12 million of which were unique titles. As mass deacidification efforts proved costly and inconsistent, librarians and archivists began looking for more practical ways to preserve the intellectual content of the decaying material. Microfilm, one of the most stable and durable mediums around at the time, was decided to be the most reasonable alternative.

• 1987 - A subcommittee of the House of Representatives during the 100th Congress (1st session) addressed the problem of "brittle books in our nation's libraries."
• March 17, 1988 - Patricia Battin, president of the Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA), testified before the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies (Committee on Appropriations). She proposed a collaborative approach to the preservation of the nation's brittle books and asked the House to increase federal funding for preservation microfilming.[1]
• October, 1988 - An appropriations bill for fiscal year 1989 gave the National Endowment for the Humanities $12.5 million. Eight million dollars of that sum went to instituting a twenty-year program for the microfilming of endangered volumes.[2]
• 1995 - The program was assessed to be on schedule and 25% complete.
• Roughly 50,000 brittle and endangered volumes are microfilmed each year.

[3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

William Barrow was a pioneer conservator in the library science field. He connected the paper strength or lack thereof (brittle paper) to the acidity of the groundwood used to make wood pulp after the 1850s.[8] With his own observations of his collection and tests conducted, he announced to the library community that acid deterioration begins to show signs after 20,40 and 80 years.[9]

As with other National Endowment for the Humanities programs, the Brittle Books Program is a partnership program, meaning that qualifying institutions must apply for grants in order to participate. Should the institution be accepted, they are required to share at least 33% of the program's costs. Unlike other National Endowment for the Humanities preservation funding initiatives, the Brittle Books program does require that an institution in each state must be awarded a grant. The projects are largely run at the state level with the National Endowment for the Humanities providing methodologies, assuring a standard level of quality, and connecting the efforts of the various institutions. To be awarded a grant as part of the Brittle Books Program, institutions were required to abide by five basic conditions:

• 1. That they abide by the national standard
• 2. That they create three copies of all material: a master negative, a print negative, and a service copy
• 3. That a record adhering to national standards be entered into a national bibliographic database
• 4. That interlibrary loan copies be readily available
• 5. That storage conditions meet that of the national standard[10]

As libraries move into the digital era, preservation practices attempt to move with them. Current and future projects in preserving brittle volumes are more likely to involve scanning and digitization than microfilming. A recent example of such a program is the Digitizing America's Imprints project at the Library of Congress which received a $2 million grant in 2007.[19]

• Slow Fires: On the Preservation of the Human Record, a film by Terry Sanders[20]
• Turning to Dust[21]
• Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, a book by Nicholson Baker