Breaking Really Bad

You know these guys:

These are the guys who send you sale catalogs with “autographs” of famous people, sometimes on crude rectangles of paper that are a result of slicing around the placement of other text on documents they were cut from.

These are the guys who offer you great bargains on ONE of the 145 Audubon prints that used to be in a four volume Havell Edition. (You can always buy the rest; one at a time, just like the original purchasers did!)

These are the guys who will sell you a “unbound” report from the U.S. Serial Set consisting of a lengthy letter from the Secretary of War describing the Custer fiasco.

These are the guys archivists and rare book dealers call the “Breakers.”

All archivists have dealt with breakers in the past, but here at True Archives we wonder if their offerings are due to increase or decrease? After all, as Information Scientists continue their relentless “weeding” of public repositories, the acquisition opportunities for a whole new generation of razor blade-wielding, dumpster-diving entrepreneurs increases. But if libraries slowly decrease their shelving by meticulously recycling and pulping their former inventories, the breakers will have no easily accessible supply of books to mutilate and try to sell piecemeal to us. Will the breakers, in the white hot rage of denied supply, then try to “break” the Biblioposers?