I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed. They offer plans to build little libraries, and I hope to build some. “Owner” will have to build the supports, though.
Public libraries are nothing more than a group-buy scheme. Everyone throws tax money in the pot and the library buys books and media for everyone to use. Since one can't fit infinite physical objects in a finite space, the collection must be continually pruned and curated. Library systems track circulation figures and unpopular works get weeded.
In my case, weeded books go on the $.50 shelf. If they stay there they go to a different organization for bulk sale, or eventually trashed.
The harsh reality is that there is an almost infinite number of books. The vast majority of which will never be lasting or consequential works. Nobody needs a copy of a 1998 vampire smut thriller, and the world is not worse off for destroying your copy.
Librarians do, however, try to keep notable and important works in the collection regardless of circulation. Some books, but only some, are important enough to stick around forever, and in large part they do.
Libraries only get rid of materials that aren't being used and which take up space for materials that will be used. The goal isn't to preserve knowledge, it's to allow every citizen the same access to knowledge and entertainment as their neighbors. It's to use your population's limited resources to procure the most needed/desired materials for their money. They're optimizing accessibility and foot traffic because that's their purpose.
True archival happens elsewhere
My wife is an elementary school reading teacher and runs a yearly family book night where she takes book donations she gets all year and fills a bunch of portable tables in the gym with kids (and adult) books that are free for the taking. What is left over is taken (by me) to that local company and dumped in huge bins. If you are looking to get rid of a bunch of books I'd also suggest contacting your local schools to see if they take donations.
People frequently take all the good books, all at once, and don't return them.
Someone just emptied out half of it yesterday, and I don't even think they were picky. They just took a whole shelf of books.
It's such a crappy thing to do, and there's nothing that can be done to stop the bad actors.
Where I live actually has the opposite; there are ~6 within a mile, and they're usually completely full. People are always dumping huge collections into them, to where I never even have the chance to give back myself.
I don't know what makes it different here. But it is possible for them to work without safeguards.
The trick is to plump up such a library with a few books no one will take. Cheap romances etc.
I really like devilbunny's idea of a cute little stamp though! It probably wouldn't stop very determined people, but would probably deter a lot.
https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a...
Books that have been scanned can be shipped using the below info.
https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...
(no affiliation)
They don't all have a home anymore.
Sad, but that's where we're at. It's not book burning in the traditional meaning, wven if that's what is happening.
Do these work for kids' books? Whenever I've seen them geared towards adults, the content is absolute crap.
She’s specifically a children’s book person, so we made sure our library could fit kids books (picture books are big). But many of the kits won’t.
We also live in a walkable college town. There are 5 libraries within 4 blocks of ours. Our neighbors take it upon themselves to clean up and donate. We came back from our Christmas break to someone having installed a motion activated light in the library!
So under the right conditions they work. But you know what works better? Professional librarians, with appropriate resources and facilities. But in all cases, free libraries, public libraries, research libraries, etc. deaccessioning is required so sad for the op, we throw books away.
I had a lot of good books that I finished reading and wouldn't realistically touch again.
Whenever I went to browse for some books I would leave one of them in exchange. Over time, the quality went up because other people started doing the same.
To be honest, I did curate the available books at it as well. Obvious crap (self-published conspiracy theory stuff) was thrown out. At some point you will also have to simple throw out some old ones if they never get taken. Space is limited and a 50 year old book that is collecting dust is not useful to anyone.
Librarians try to “market” books based on what they think the public wants or needs.
They try to assure a variety of books put forward, with a special emphasis on “good for you” books.
Books deed as “not good for you” are likely to be shelved in the back.
in practice, libraries use the Dewey decimal system, but that excluded the many “exhibits” of “good for you” material.
I don’t mean “good for you” in a good or bad way. It’s simply what the librarian believes will be most helpful to the readers.
There are currently some very real and important controversies in public libraries that have no clear solution.
If they cared, they wouldn’t post publicly or the service would not allow that message to embedded.
An enforceable request is called a “demand”, and unless you’re actually capable of enforcing it, it is in fact still just a request.
It would have been polite to honor the request, but they are under no obligation to do so.
Don’t make public posts if you don’t want them publicly displayed.
See here :https://skyview.social/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbsky.app%2Fprofile...
Wait...you're still reading, defying my T&Cs!
The tag to not display on external websites is up to Bluesky to enforce. I mean, you understand those Bluesky chirps or whatever are literally being served by Bluesky, right?
The actual message in the bsky widget could be improved to state that the label is masking the original post and not the reply.
The AI always tells them what they want to hear, and so they trust it. It's not magic.
Is there any empirical evidence that librarians are terrible at their jobs?
The reason is not the supposed fallibility of humans but rather the supposed infallibility of technology. Nontechnical people don't know how the technology works, don't know how the sausage is made, and they mistakenly assume it can't go wrong, just like a calculator can't go wrong.
Also, people are not good at revising their beliefs. A lot depends on what they hear first, and they usually hear from the internet before they hear from an expert, because it's easier and faster to consult the former. It's embarrassing to admit to yourself that you were suckered into believing something false, so the emotional coping mechanism is to get angry at the person who contradicts your beliefs, which preserves your self-respect.
(Yes, I know about the phrases written below every singe one of them. They're probably being taken just as seriously as ToS.)
Yes, this would require better funding, and yes, I regularly donate to my local library every year.
We're going through this at my workplace as well, converting from cubicles to an open floor plan, so workspaces which had decades of accumulated books are being cleared out --- I've rescued as many as I can justify from the recycling bin, but that's a tiny portion, so I'm feeling this sort of decision quite viscerally.
Yeah … no. If you use a citation and you didn’t read the article yourself then it is absolutely intentional deception, and it should be treated as such.
Article is about a librarian in Virginia. OP is commenting about practice in India. Unless there is some secret code to global librarian conduct, chances are you're all correct.
Which highlights why Archive.org is so important as an archival and lending library. It's like the idealized version of microfiche. The content of the books have been made so small that not only can they be trivially stored, but beamed to your pocket at any time, almost anywhere in the world.
There are at least ~158 Million books in existence as of 2023[3], and between 2 and 4 million added every year. To ask that each library be an unopinionated store of physical books is too much, and reduces their function to a well-organized warehouse, when the real power of libraries are its librarians. They are research specialists available to anyone and everyone, and well worth a conversation the next time you want to know just about anything.
1: https://search.worldcat.org/title/22114396 2: https://archive.org/details/thinkinginpostsc0000reid 3: https://isbndb.com/blog/how-many-books-are-in-the-world/
Thanks for the idea!
You might even put a stamp on a sheet of paper with a note that it's in every book in the library to discourage the thieves from looking in the first place.
FROM THE LITTLE FREE LIBRARY OF SPRINGFIELD
ENJOY IT AND PASS IT ON
ANYONE WHO SELLS IT IS A THIEF
ONE-STAR REVIEW THEM WITH WHY
ON THE SITE WHERE YOU BOUGHT ITUnlike digital world where storage is cheap, in physical world it is limited. Thus focus on what the customers want is reasonable.
Archival libraries are different game. There keeping at least one copy is often reasonable.
I disagree with this. Libraries are notorious for being open about their processes; they will happily reveal flows of materials, down to the item.
So probably, no one had borrowed it in the time between. I was very happy the book had not been thrown out.
Yet when I took the book off the shelf it looked like no one had touched it in many years.
You've also got to look at what does it add to the collection, might it be used in the future, is it available elsewhere, etc.
But, at the end of the day, most libraries aren't archives. Having a collection of books that nobody uses doesn't provide a community service.
Why can the post even be embedded at all in this case? If Gizmodo was forced to screenshot it to circumvent that you might have a point.
Yes it's public, anyone outside the group can find and see it, but it's clearly meant to be enjoyed by the people who made it or/and happened to come across it by chance.
This happens all the time though, and it's expected it might happen when you do it.
I live nearby a couple of lakes within a nice little forest, me and some friends found a spot a couple of summers ago a bit out from the trails which we improved to have a fire pit, some log benches, built a mobile sauna, and left notes that its intended to be used publicly. We knew that at some point it'd be found, and potentially ruined. It kinda happened, someone broke the sauna, we didn't feel we were owed anything since we decided to make it public, we knew the dangers.
If you don’t like this, then you can either try to restrict things to an extent e.g. by obscurity, like posting a YouTube video as unlisted, or building your fireplace somewhere public but remote or hidden, or you keep things enforceably private, like a private online group, or building on someone’s land.
A compromise would be to have screenshotted and crossed out names.
Also, does that message reflect the author’s preferences at the time they write that post, or is it possible it was enabled after Gizmodo embedded it?