Taxpayers voices are always heard, we just don’t always do what they ask.
My library has a giant stack of suggestion cards by by the circulation desk that people can fill out. After making the suggestion the public has no more say in the matter, at that point, it’s solely up to the librarian’s discretion.
Either I’m missing your point, or you’re missing mine. I feel that there’s a very big difference. In one case, a librarian is looking at catalogs containing tens of thousands of new books, and winnowing it down to the hundreds that the library will acquire–and then repeating the process every month or every quarter. In the other case, somebody is looking at the existing stock, which someone already decided was worthing putting on the shelves and trying to have it pulled. Why? So that somebody else can’t read it.
A librarian’s job is to put as many books as possible on the shelves that people want to read. It’s not mob rule for the librarian to respond to suggestions from the public, and it’s not authoritarian for the librarian to attempt to anticipate those requests and buy the books that people will probably want to check out.
Requesting a book for a library = adding stock so that someone else can read it.
Requesting a ban = removing stock so that someone else can’t read it.
The former is expanding our freedoms and options. The latter is infringing them.
So adding a book (for free!) would be such a good deal no librarian would turn it down? Unless of course they were into silencing some points of view.
Space constraints (and every library has space constraints) force the librarians to be choosy over which books are added and which books are sold after they are donated. What library needs a dozen new copies of Jurassic Park every year?
Plus, a lot of stuff that’s donated is in horrible shape and wouldn’t survive having labels slapped on it in processing, let alone the rigors of circulation.
I think you’re looking to be outraged when logic should tell you your demands are unreasonable.
Is shelf space free and unlimited? No. In a library of finite size, every book that goes onto a shelf means less space for other books. And every half-hour spent cataloguing and labeling a newly acquired book means less time to devote to other library tasks.
So a librarian would have to be a fool to believe that just because somebody handed them a free book, it’s necessarily a good idea for them to catalogue and shelve it.
Hell, even thrift shops, which are purely charity organizations dependent on donated goods to turn a penny, don’t just automatically accept and add to their stock every single shmatte or tchotchke that somebody gives them. They have to exercise some judgement about what sort of things make the most sense for them to stock, given that they don’t have unlimited time and space to accomodate everything.
When the most powerful politician in the city asks about banning books ,it is not just a question. There is a message being sent.
Not quite. There’s no such thing as adding a book for free, since it has to be processed and put into the system, which takes labor. Also, library shelf space is not infinite, and it’s up to the librarian to decide what books merit the space they take up. If I handed a bunch of old ripped-up Gor paperbacks to a librarian (for free!), the books would not merit the time, money, and shelf space they would take up.
A library collection has to be a bunch of things:
–Reasonably updated, but retaining many older books of worth/historical interest.
–Balanced, covering a million different topics fairly but without over-emphasizing topics (if you let your Sylvia Browne books outnumber your books on art history, you have a problem, though that would never actually happen because astrology books always get stolen).
–Plenty of books on topics of local interest.
–Responsive to patron interests and requests, within reason.
Now, the proper way for a patron to request any book to be added to the collection is to request it, which is free and easy to do. Most library systems with enough money to do so will buy just about anything that a patron requests, within reason. (They probably won’t buy your vanity-press novel, or random older novels, etc.)
Donating a book to the library and expecting it to show up on the shelves is simply unrealistic. That’s not what donations are for. Donations are, primarily, for libraries to sell in order to buy new books they’ve actually chosen. So donating a book on any topic is not a good way to get that book in the system; you are much more likely to see the book appear if you fill out a request. There is no reason for a librarian to go through the giant pile of donated books, putting anything in reasonable condition into the collection. The library may well put a few selected titles on the shelves if their book budget is small enough, but it’s not a collection development tool at all.
When a librarian is looking at controversial topics to stock, she’s going to be looking to purchase the best, most respected, or most popular books in the genre, not whatever comes into the donation pile. You want a few well-selected titles that will cover the ground completely and competently from different points of view. The donation table is simply not the source from which you look to create that.
We’ve explained this so many times now, I don’t understand why the same question keeps getting asked.
Just to reinforce this point, I own a bookstore with a used book room, and I turn down at least half of the stuff I’m offered for free.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, think about it like this: You give me a copy of “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” that your mom bought in the 70s. I already have 14 copies. I sell one of those every four years. If I accept your book, it’s likely to sit here for over 50 years before I finally sell it for fifty cents. My shelf space needs to make me a LOT more than a penny a year per book to make a profit. So even though you’re offering me something for free that I can sell for real money someday, it’s not worth it and I’ll turn it down. I’d rather pay a buck for a Patterson book I’ll sell for three bucks next month than take “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” and let it rot on the shelf.
Perhaps it would help you to understand that most libraries get a lot of donations–we take hundreds of books every week, and we’re a medium-small library. Librarians do not go through donations–that’s a job that volunteers do (usually volunteers are the ones running the book sales and anything to do with donations). In our library–not in all–the volunteers take books they think the library might want and set them aside for the librarians to check through. So librarians don’t see the majority of donated books at all.
How difficult is it to establish a public library, anyway? Can I rent or buy a building, fill it with books, and call it a library?
If so, I don’t see the censorship angle, here, any more than it’s “censorship” for PBS to choose not to air pro-wrestling.
As an afterthought, rather than donating right-wing books and crowing when they don’t get shelf space, what if the right-wingers had requested the library stock particular right-wing books and then crow when (assuming if) the requests get ignored or rejected, claiming their interests are not being served in favour of librul left-wingy stuff?
Too complicated?
Preach it brother. Add to this that most libraries, especially small ones, have a backlog in cataloging, and this is especially true if it’s a not very popular book that doesn’t already have a LoC or Dewey record available through the cataloging source (OCLC) that most libraries use (i.e. they can’t just “copy and paste” and amend certain parts of the data as needed). Books can be and are sometimes fast tracked, but most wait in line, and as most smaller libraries don’t have a full time cataloger (the librarian who does cataloging [which is a specialty] may also do everything from part-time reference to watching the circulation desk) it’s not uncommon for it to take weeks or months for an item to get to the shelf.
It’s not a matter of censorship. If the books had been bestsellers by Stephen King or treatises by the Planned Parenthood it’s doubtful they’d have reached the shelf any sooner if at all. WHAT goes on the shelf is a major decision at all libraries. You want to have some free space, but not much, and there comes a point at which nothing can go on the shelves without something coming off. So here’s a book on “Abortion is Sinful”- what do you take off to make room for it? Do you already have anti-abortion books? If so, how often do they circulate and do you need another? Etc.
In other words it’s an artificial excuse for chest thumping. I’m pretty far to the left and I routinely order any new books by Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and other pundits I loathe because I know they’ll be requested and I think most librarians worth their salt are the same.
Exactly. Mainstream righty authors are already well represented in any decent library. And asking for (or donating) fringe stuff makes the request easy to ignore because it’s, by definition, stuff on the fringe.
The same is true for lefty stuff.
Yes, you can. And you can make it public or private and stock it with anything you darned well please.
Uh, no. I don’t see how you could possibly take that message from anything any librarian has posted here. Unless the donor is in possession of a rare and valuable book, it isn’t a deal for the library at all.
The majority of public libraries do not need, or even particularly want, donated books to add to their collections. It’s not like librarians don’t know where to buy books, and the cost of a single book is usually a negligible expense*. The cover price may well be less than the cost of the labor that goes into cataloging, processing, and shelving the book.
If the donated book then sits there on the shelf unread, it’s all been for nothing.
If libraries were required to shelve every single donated book, you’d have libraries filled to the bursting point with vintage Harlequins, Reader’s Digest condensed novels, self-published sub-Vogon quality poetry, and multiple copies of the bestsellers of yesteryear. It is not the library’s responsibility to provide a forum for every single book ever printed. A library that did not exercise some judgment in the selection process would be of very little use to anyone.
*At a small academic library it can be a different story. At my old job we regularly accepted donations of scholarly texts from professors, but these were books that cost $100-$300 each. They were also books donated by people who were experts in the field and had a good idea of what would actually be useful to the library. Even then we didn’t take everything – some donations clearly had nothing to do with the research field to which our collection was devoted.
Any other librarians ever get those packages from Scientology? They send us (small academic) boxes of newly printed books on Scientology and books by and about [from Scientologist authors] L. Ron Hubbard about once a year. These are brand new excellent condition books; we added a couple of copies of Dianetics to the library since there are occasionally reports on Scientology but the sci-fi novels and others usually get put on the free books cart and later tossed if not claimed.
Professors can be a real pain in the ass with their donations as well. I’ve had professors over the years who wanted to donate boxes full of 20 year old textbooks, dogeared paperback copies of books already in the library, books that you can be pretty sure absolutely nobody anytime is ever going to check out (“ooh, a copy of Black Beauty in Chinese, thanks!”) and they want to be recognized with everything from plaques to absurd tax deductions to just short of a small wing with a marble bust of the professor on a turntable. Also, lawyers- I’ve had some lawyers and their widows get downright rude when they want to donate old law books- “these things cost $12,000 and you’re a non-profit organization!” (and they well might have cost $12,000 but we already have them and can’t afford the shelf space- I’m sure you can find a law student who’d love to have them).
How much does it cost to store a book?
At an off-site facility, this 1997 study estimated the cost at $3.90 per volume for 10 years.
Making a half-assed calculation and assuming a rate of return of 5%, I figure the cost to endow a volume for 100 years at about $10. Consider that to be a lowest bound estimate: on-site storage would necessarily be substantially more expensive.
Interesting data point, but don’t forget that if we’re talking about libraries, the book has to be more than just stored: it has to be stamped, barcoded, labeled, inventoried, cataloged, possibly have its cover wrapped in plastic and have a loss-prevention sticker hidden in it somewhere, and shelved. In other words, it has to become part of a library collection, not just take up space, which involves labor, computer systems, and supplies. Then, once it’s become part of the collection, you need librarians with library systems to help people find it, keep people from walking off with it, check it out, and check it back in – more labor, more computers.
Thank you all. You have to respect the Dope for the level of discussion, experience and information available.
Oh god yes! They send us DVDs that talk about the glorious history of Scientology. I think I’ve gotten four different pacakges in the last two years. I chucked the discs and I saved the DVD cases because replacement cases are always good to have around.
“An Intimate Interview With Scientology Founder L Ron Hubbard”? Not so much.