There is no evidence that evidence based practice improves outcomes.
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‘Book’ is not an interchangeable unit. There is always more Patterson.
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I can’t imagine most of the books on the list being controversial. But maybe they are, like I said, the article doesn’t really make it clear what we are dealing with.
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This hasn’t been a blanket defense of the actions of the librarian but rather a criticism of the system they were attempting to subvert
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Come to think of it, why did I never see any machine readable card catalog cards? That seems like something that would have been useful back in the punchcard era.
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Liked for the resignation evident in
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Perhaps you have hit upon card catalogs of the future! 
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Chuck Finley and an FBI agent have become very good friends due to his weekly checking out of 683 copies of Catcher in the Rye, so you can’t say it’s been all bad.
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I recently ran head first into this problem of “old stuff gets ditched”, when comparing our “must read sci-fi” lists with my mum, who, ironically, works at the head branch of the local library system.
They had ditched all of Vernor VInge’s books, except Rainbow’s End and The Children of the Sky (the third Zone of Thought book). Quite disappointing, as he’s one of my favourite hard sci-fi authors, and the two books they still hold are probably his least hard-fi works.
The same library system provides access to OverDrive and Borrowbox (and ComicsPlus and Zinio even), but neither digital system has Vernor Vinge either 
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Growing up, we had three different sets of old Encyclopedias; one from just after WW1, one from just before WW2, and one from just after WW2. It was interesting to read the differing perspectives on events over the decades; especially because these were put out by Harmsworths, publishers of the Daily Heil, so you got the full force of Imperialism and pro-Fascism. As on-line encyclopedias are open to constant editing and updating, they won’t provide quite the same perspective.
“Mr Space Station” will be the name of my bubblegum-pop band.
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Veracity is just one criterion in determining whether to keep a title. The dialectics and thought processes contained within that title are another and just as important. The history of the natural sciences is loaded with dead-ends and antiquated models but the thinking behind them is the very stuff of science–a longitudinal conversation spanning centuries.
Aristotle may have once asserted that the brain merely cools the blood but his thoughts on metaphysics and epistemology were foundational to empiricism. His thoughts aren’t just worth revisiting; they’re incredibly fascinating to revisit because you can see how his thoughts in this collective conversation informed systematic natural observation centuries later.
Researchers who ignore this history are missing out on what it means to be a scientist.
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this changes fast, even in very conservative/religious families - smartphones are nearly ubiquitous and will not go away
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dunno, the history gives the possibility to select any point in time
random example:
before Rosetta
after Rosetta
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Yes and no. There’s public libraries that are research-focused (such as the New York Public Library main branch), and those do keep outdated books so people can write about trends in writing about computers over time or what not, but most public libraries are just providing reading material to the general public. They need to have lots of copies of Harry Potter books and recent bestsellers because that’s what the public wants, and books that I would find fascinating dealing with assembly language programming on 8-bit computers are just taking room.
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My high school library was full of books. Take a closer look – computer science from the 80s, travel guides from the 60s, maps with the Soviet Union still listed (this was 2002).
I’m guessing the librarian did not toss these specimens simply because the shelves would be barren; we didn’t have the money for new books. So the old books remained, unused, of little interest to anyone except a historian, a historian who would never show up.
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Have you read “Rainbow’s end” by Vernon Vinge. In the story there is a library system where the scanner literaly eats the books. As it shreds them it scans the broken pages and makes a digital copy. So the act of digitally copying actually destroys the actual book.
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I have no problem with libraries getting rid of books. It gives me a chance to add out of print books to my library.
If you get them in time. My local library got rid of a huge bunch of Marguerite Duras books. Never did replace them.
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This reminds me of the Wells Fargo scandal, but for literacy.
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So many things to comment on! I am a librarian (MLIS) but I don’t work in a library. On the other hand, I’ve worked with hundreds of public libraries as a materials handling consultant. Here’s my take on this thread:
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About weeding algorithms. There are lots of reports that librarians can run that will generate lists of books to be considered for weeding. Dusty Shelves List is basically the one being discussed and it refers to an item that hasn’t circulated in some period of time (set by the librarian running the report). These books are always reviewed by a librarian before being confirmed for discard.
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Last Copy. Librarians pay close attention to the “last copy” of a title and won’t get rid of it unless they are sure it can be gotten from somewhere else (downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg, borrowed from a partner library or interlibrary loaned from afar) or if it is really outdated and not “earning his position on the shelf.”
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Public libraries versus Academic Libraries versus Archives. Public libraries (as many have noted) are not about retaining the knowledge of humankind, they are about providing entertainment, current news and reference material. They are very limited in what they can afford to keep on the shelves so have to work very hard to keep their collections rotating out the old stuff (or just unpopular stuff) to make room for the new stuff. They can’t keep all those Catcher in the Rye copies when they have a waitlist of 150 people for the latest Patterson novel. However, they would sure be happy to get you a Catcher in the Rye or direct you to the Internet Archive where you can download a copy in multiple formats (https://archive.org/details/CatcherInTheRye).
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About tossing out good DVDs. Most public libraries toss out DVDs after some number of circulations just because they start causing problems during playback and that ends up being extremely frustrating for patrons who go home, make their popcorn, and are ready to enjoy a good movie but can’t. A high circulating DVD will “usually” be replaced when taken out of the collection unless they can’t afford it.
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Automated storage and retrieval systems. Academic libraries use big storage warehouses to keep low circulating items or “last copies” and they can usually be ordered online and delivered to their patrons within a day or two. These systems cost millions of dollars to build and maintain but they allow many more books to be archived. Public libraries cannot afford such a thing although NYPL is building one (first one for public libraries). This will allow them to keep more of the kinds of books we’ve been discussing while leaving room for the popular titles that are more actively circulating in their 150 branches (or something like that).
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Resource sharing and Interlibrary loan. Many libraries partner with other libraries and have “reciprocal borrowing” relationships that allow everyone’s stuff to be freely shared with everyone else. You can find it in the catalog and request it and it comes to your library, even if it actually belongs to another library. This is the happening more and more (thankfully). But sometimes, the deals these libraries make are that they’ll share everything except, say, the popular DVDs. They do that to ensure the money they spend on those pricey DVDs goes to their patrons. Perhaps their library board or city council is ornery because they don’t want them lending their stuff to other libraries (without recognizing the benefit of the totality of a resource sharing arrangement to provide a 10-20x larger collection for their patrons to choose titles from). Interlibrary loan (ILL) is when you have no such relationship but you can still ask another library for a title. Pretty much all libraries will request anything you really want for you, you just have to ask. And ILL takes longer since it involves a bunch of paperwork.
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LGBTQ issues and books on the shelf. As a lesbian, I very much appreciate that libraries keep things on the shelves for a questioning LGBTQ person to find as I did when I was younger (thank you for Patience and Sarah). I agree that this is critical and provides more privacy than a Google search can. And besides, with the Google algorithms, there’s a good chance they are going to find out that Gays are Evil or some such horrible thing and not be guided to authoritative resources that they would otherwise find courtesy of a professional librarian. Also, many libraries are forced to employ Internet content filters which are not well managed (IMHO) so they might not be able to find ANYTHING that would help them if the content filters were blocking that category of content (which some unfortunately do but the folks in the library aren’t always paying as much attention as I wish they were to this issue).
I think that’s it. I hope you don’t mind my sharing my experience! I’m hoping you will find it interesting to hear more about the actual workings of public libraries (beyond what your particular library might be doing).
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I’m ready an excellent biography of the typeographer Bodini right now that is chock full important historical information, as well as being a great reference book. I found it as a library discard. Publication date? 2016.
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“I’d like to check out these books.”
“Certainly. Would you like to sign up for our Library Plus Card? Or How about the Friends of the Library Account?”
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