College and Research Libraries


Magnitude of the Paper-Deterioration 
Problem As Measured by a National Union 
Catalog Sample 

T h e deterioration of paper has wor-
ried librarians for many years, and evi-
dence that the situation is even worse 
than had been feared was supplied in 
1959 when the Council on Library Re-
sources sponsored studies on the perma-
nence of book paper. Careful tests of the 
physical condition of 500 typical non-
fiction books printed in the United 
States between 1900 and 1949 supported 
the conclusion that "it seems probable 
that most library books printed in the 
first half of the twentieth century will 
be in an unusable condition in the next 
century."1 

During 1960 the Association of Re-
search Libraries appointed a Committee 
on the Preservation of Research Library 
Materials under the chairmanship of 
Douglas W . Bryant of the Harvard Uni-
versity Library, and this committee has 
been investigating various aspects of the 
problem. One of the most obvious but 
also most difficult questions that has con-
fronted it relates to the magnitude of 
the program that would be required to 
preserve research materials. It seemed 
desirable, as a first step, to try to deter-
mine how many different books are in 
American research libraries, and how 
many of these were printed since 1870 
when the "poor-paper era" began. 

Consequently a grant was obtained 
from the Council on Library Resources 
to enable the committee to retain the 
Research Triangle Institute of Durham, 
North Carolina, to draw and analyze a 

l Deterioration of Book Stock; Causes and Remedies. 
Two Studies on the Permanence of Book Paper, con-
ducted by W . J . B a r r o w . Edited by Randolph W . Church 
( R i c h m o n d : T h e V i r g i n i a S t a t e L i b r a r y , 1 9 5 9 ) p. 16. 

sample from the National Union Cata-
log. It should be emphasized that all 
figures reported below refer only to 
books represented in the National Union 
Catalog, and do not include serial publi-
cations. 

As c o p i e s o f t h e Revised Final Report 
on the Sample of Cards from the Union 
Card Catalog, Library of Congress a r e 
available free of charge from Mr. Bryant, 
details of the sampling procedure will 
not be given here. T h e Main File of the 
Catalog was covered, as well as the Sup-
plemental, Current, Slavic, Hebraic, 
Chinese, and Japanese sections; but cards 
for 1952-1955 were not included because 
they had been withdrawn at the time 
for reproduction. T h e sample consisted 
of 952 cards, of which 735 were for book 
titles; the remaining 217 were analytics, 
added entries, cross references, entries 
for manuscripts, etc. 

T h e total number of cards in the Na-
tional Union Catalog was estimated to 
be 15,330,800. T h e number of different 
book titles represented was 10,493,300 or, 
since the average number of volumes per 
title was 1.37, approximately 14,376,000 
volumes. Of the titles, slightly more than 
58 per cent (6,099,800) were reported by 
a single library, but heavy duplication 
of holdings for some of the others 
brought the average to 2.35 holdings re-
ported per title. 

T h e average number of pages per 
title was estimated at 285.8965, so the 
number of pages represented by all book 
titles in the catalog was estimated at 
2,999,998,000. It was further estimated 

(Continued on page 543) 

N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 2 499 



P a p e r Deterioration . . . 

(Continued from page 499) 

that 73.05 per cent of the titles (7,665,-
800) and 57.34 per cent of the pages 
(1,720,570,000) were printed since 1869. 
Foreign imprints accounted for 65.72 
per cent of the titles and 56.2 per cent 
of the total pages. A breakdown by dec-
ade of publication was made, as well as 
one by country of publication, but the 
number of items in each category is too 
small to provide estimates deserving of 
much confidence. 

From the standpoint of preservation, 
the magnitude of one phase of the prob-
lem has been indicated more clearly than 
before by the estimate that books (not 
serials) printed since 1870 and repre-
sented in the National Union Catalog 
contain approximately one and three-
quarter billion pages.—Edwin E. Wil-
liams. 

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