1970s article about decline in book manufacturing

[Extollager]

I have consulted my local university library and the state library. It seems they discarded The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature -- in which it probably would have been easy to find the article I'm about to describe -- and now, whattya know, can't help me.

Sometime in the 1970s, probably after 1972, I read an article about how publishers were substituting glue binding for hardcover books, rather than Smyth-sewn signatures. This made a great impression on me and I soon told my best friend about it. We were nascent bibliophiles, I guess -- I was, anyway. Photos below show book with pages as sewn signatures.

The article almost certainly appeared in The New York Times Book Review (not The New York Review of Books) or (maybe) Harper's magazine.

Can anyone help? I'm curious, whether you want to do anything about my request or not, if any of my fellow American Chronsters live in places where the librarians have not thrown out The Reader's Guide.

Oh, those assurances -- "We don't need 'em, everything's online." Probably said in good faith, too. Apparently there is an online "Historic New York Times" index, but it costs libraries to subscribe to it, and use doesn't justify spending the money.

I admit, I'm tired of circumstances that bring to mind yet again the old question -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

[Extollager]

Update: I have established contact with a university library that does have the Reader's Guide, and a librarian has looked into this. I'm hopeful. At the very least, I was really pleased to see that there was a library in the region that has not thrown out its Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature volumes.

Some folks here might never have seen those once-familiar thick olive green volumes. If you got started looking up articles on your favorite author, Tolkien or whoever, in the 1960s-1970s, in the States, you almost certainly used these publications of the H. W. Wilson Company. They tended to be worn because they got a lot of use in former days.

 

[hitmouse]

Brings back memories of some of the gigantic science indices, such as the Zoological Record and Index Medicus. Whole sections of university libraries were taken up with these vast encyclopedias until the late 90s, when digital referencing became the norm. I occasionally feel nostalgic, though tbh I can access and catalogue stuff on my laptop in half an hour that would have taken me a week in the old days. I chucked my handwritten reference card files about 20 years ago. Free software like Menderley does all the same stuff so much better, albeit lacking the tactile experience and the atmosphere of the stacks.

 

[Extollager]

Sure. The problem here is that I'm after an article of historical interest (it was News at the time) and the sources indexing these, in periodicals such as I'm sure it was in, are now gone from libraries that might have had them before.

It is also possible that my memory is at fault and the article was primarily on something else and only mentioned the manufacturing thing briefly, i.e. that even if we had the indexes, they might not have indexed under this topic.

I wish I had saved a photocopy, because this was kind of momentous in my life! And I'll bet an old friend remembers hearing from me about it, too... something like 50 years ago.

 

[Extollager]

Good news... I think this article has been found. A librarian in another city sent me a citation (couldn’t send the article itself because of some restriction) and I should have it via my own library. The article that’s been found is from 1976!

 

[Extollager]

Well, guess what. I thought an article from the 21 Nov. 1976 New York Times was my source. But just now I happened to see myself referring to the distinction between glue binding and "stitch" binding (sewn signatures) in an apazine from March-June 1975.

I'm guessing that it wasn't a Times article that put me on to this since librarians have searched that periodical for me. It might have been Harper's magazine.

Dale

 

[psikeyhackr]

I have consulted my local university library and the state library. It seems they discarded The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature -- in which it probably would have been easy to find the article I'm about to describe -- and now, whattya know, can't help me.

Jeez, I haven't thought of those since I don't know when. Maybe the 80s. Another getting old reminder.

 

[Extollager]

They were a great resource, and it's sickening that so many libraries have thrown out their sets. At the library I know best, the argument that the space was needed for other things falls flat. (Incidentally, I think the impetus for the discarding of so much came from above rather than being cooked up out of the blue by the library staff.) The library today looks like space largely for the storage of unused tables and chairs, set out nicely for students who never come.