I grew up in New York City, and would visit the Lincoln Center branch
of the New York Public Library (NYPL) where I occasionally consulted
those same Music Trades Reviews (MTR).  I'm glad to see that the
originals were saved: on a visit some years ago I was dismayed to find
that the magazines had been transferred to microfilm, more so because
the microfilmed version was practically unreadable on the viewers
provided.  There must be viewers that let the user read an entire page
without eyestrain, and without constant adjustment of the controls,
but I have yet to encounter one in a public library.

A book called "Double Fold", by Nicholson Baker, addresses the issue
in a very interesting matter.  He concentrates on the sale and/or
destruction of large archives of bound newspapers formerly held by
libraries, and their replacement by microfilm, itself less durable
than the original materials (according to Mr. Baker).

Maybe the advent of digital scanning will appease both sides in the
argument, providing good retrievable copies without taking up vast
amounts of physical storage space.  Now that the computer lets our
every utterance be preserved indefinitely -- perhaps to be used against
us at some later date -- the question for future generations may be
whether we are saving too much information that nobody will ever want
to access.

Richard Friedman