Hayes was a network consultant: Hayes’s papers are at UCLA; the OCLC entry for them (accession no. 37992540) includes a biographical note. See also Anne Woodsworth and Barbara von Wahlde, eds., Leadership for Research Libraries: A Festschrift for Robert M. Hayes (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1988), which includes an incomplete biography and a bibliography — Hayes’s work for the military is either unmentioned or shielded behind acronyms such as USAFBMD.
SWAC: The Standards Western Automatic Computer was designed by an Englishman, Harry Huskey, in 1950. Robert Hayes used it on problems of “matrix decomposition,” but the SWAC was also employed to calculate Mersenne primes, useful for cryptography. Hayes wrote me: “Much of the work of staff at the Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA”—home of the SWAC—“was actually concerned with coding and decoding methods. I am sure that NSA funding was important. That wasn’t the focus of my own work, so I cannot say for certain, but from all that I have learned since then, I am sure it was the case.”
Magnavox: In the late fifties, Magnavox invented the Magnacard system of information storage, an unsuccessful product. Also, as subcontractors for Kodak, Magnavox’s engineers worked on the electronics for the Minicard System, developed for the Air Force and the CIA.
Joseph Becker: Hayes had no consulting contracts with the CIA, he informs me; he took care not to discuss the CIA with Becker. Hayes would have been “delighted to have had such contracts for both financial and intellectual reasons,” but they were not forthcoming.
“The most far-reaching solution”: Robert M. Hayes and Joseph Becker, Handbook of Data Processing for Libraries (New York: Becker and Hayes, 1970), p. 69.
“effectively destroying”: Hayes, “The Cost Analysis for the Preservation Project: Report # 3 on the Preservation Project,” in his “The Magnitude,” p. 27.
a 1984 “Preservation Plan”: Hayes, “Analysis of the Magnitude,” p. 15.
CHAPTER 22 — Six Thousand Bodies a Day
“many documents”: Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Oversight Hearing, p. 1.
“dangerously brittle state”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 40.
“Across the country”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 39.
“facing extinction”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 31.
“French generals”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 35.
“almost a dead book”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 23.
“A mind is a terrible”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 24. Vartan Gregorian may not have written this speech himself and so perhaps should not be held responsible for all of it. Gregorian’s remarks were repeated nearly verbatim a year later in a talk by the New York Public Library’s Richard De Gennaro. Here is Gregorian, before Congress: “Anyone of us who uses books and paper is exposed to the problem of deteriorating paper. Looking at a four day old Washington Post, or a four year old paperback, they decay before our eyes.” Here is De Gennaro: “Any one of us who uses books and paper is exposed to the problem of deteriorating paper. Look at a four-day-old newspaper or a four-year-old paperback. They decay before our eyes.” Richard De Gennaro, “Research Libraries: Mankind’s Memory at Risk,” in Luner, Paper Preservation. De Gennaro went on to run Harvard’s library system.
“Our thrust at the Endowment”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 3.
“has only been in the forefront”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 37.
“We are dependent upon people”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 33.
“Our research houses”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 44.
“join in the task”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 61.
“a kind of giant step”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 125.
“The purpose of the work”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 60.
“The books themselves”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 58.
“It is not unlikely”: Subcommittee, Oversight Hearing, p. 109.
CHAPTER 23 — Burning Up
Haas himself (blue shirt): Terry Sanders, Slow Fires, written by Ben Maddow and narrated by Robert MacNeil, a presentation of the American Film Foundation (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library Resources, 1987). The film exists in an hour version and a half-hour version. The longer version was the original one; this account is based on it.
trying tendentiousness: For example, near the end of Slow Fires, we move slowly past an enormous computer, while Robert MacNeil says, “Stone, clay, canvas, paper, tape, and disk — a human diary, a chain of knowledge that connects everyone to everyone else. All our faith, passion, and skill — all the horror and beauty of the generations past — are left for us to ponder, unless we choose to let it wither, disintegrate, burn, and die, leaving us to stumble in the dark.”
Grand Prize: The Commission on Preservation and Access, Newsletter, November — December 1989. Daniel Boorstin, however, says some excellent things in the film about the book as a technological achievement and, perhaps with diethyl zinc on his mind, calls the library “a laboratory of our memory and a catalyst of our expectations.”
“do anything to help”: Commission on Preservation and Access, “ ‘Slow Fires’ Film Wins Award, is Widely Shown,” Newsletter insert, February 1988.
“giant Brittle Books exhibit”: See the photograph in the Commission on Preservation and Access, Newsletter 20 (February 1990). The exhibit included a leather-bound book, two feet by three feet, with some distressed bits of paper arranged in front of it, and a quotation from Slow Fires reproduced in large letters: “The great task of libraries, worldwide, is the preservation of the ordinary.”
“ ‘slow fires,’ triggered”: Quoted in Merrily Taylor, “Paper — Why Friends Should Care About It!” Among Friends of the Library of Brown University 5:2 (March 1989).
CHAPTER 24 — Going, Going, Gone
“She will emerge”: Billy E. Frye (provost of Emory University and chairman of Battin’s Commission on Preservation and Access), speaking in 1996 CAUSE Elite Award Winner: Patricia Battin (Washington, D.C.: CAUSE, 1996), videotape.
Booz, Allen and Hamilton: The grant was “sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries in cooperation with the American Council on Education under a grant from the Council on Library Resources.” Warren Haas was president of the Association of Research Libraries when he got the grant for Columbia. Booz, Allen and Hamilton, Organization and Staffing of the Libraries of Columbia University (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1972).