I’ve never had a professor be a jerk about it (although I’m still early in my career), but some of them were obviously just bringing us stuff that they wanted to get rid of. Like a book about obediance training for dogs – maybe it was an excellent work on the subject, but not much use at the library of a water research center.
Whats the difference between a midget being electrocuted and Palin. One of them is a stunning runt ,the other is…
Anyone who still thinks that libraries should shelve any and all donations should consider this point. Librarians may not be “always right”, but any librarian will have received training at the graduate level on selecting and evaluating materials. Librarians also have a professional ethical obligation to maintain a balanced collection that provides accurate information from and about a variety of viewpoints, an obligation that most librarians take very seriously.
Putting collection decisions into the hands of donors means that whatever special interest group has the most money or makes the most noise wins. If every library cheerfully accepted every book donated by the Church of Scientology, Christian Fundamentalists, and other groups with a clear interest in “witnessing” of one kind or another, the result would be more bias, not less. This is an especially troubling prospect because the people who really need public libraries are those who cannot easily afford to buy books on their own.
When it comes to what materials belong in the library, I’d trust the judgment of any librarian over that of, say, Jack T. Chick.