Mrs Piper loves the little free library movement and last year she put one up in our front garden, right off the public sidewalk.
It’s been fun. We put books in that we no longer want, and they generally disappear quickly. Other folks put books in that they don’t want and they too disappear.
Recycling of books. Good thing, right? A good book should be in the hands of someone who wants to read it, instead of just gathering dust on a shelf.
Until the past couple of days.
Yesterday, she went out to check on it, and came back in with a book someone had put in: “The German Eugenics Movement”'or some such title. A quick skim indicated it was not critical of said movement. Into the trash it went.
Today, Mrs P came with another book someone had put in: “My Awakening” by David Duke. Brand new, glossy paper cover, hard-bound. Autographed by the Ersatz-Führer himself. A bit of googling indicated autographed copies go for $50 or more on EBay.
Into the trash it went, and it’s already had some nice drippy kitchen garbage added on top, so its value is now probably nil.
Two Neo-Nazi books in two days? Not liking the pattern. Do we have a dedicated neo-Nazi propagandist hijacking the Little Free Library movement?
Or, more disturbingly, do we have a Neo-Nazi in the neighbourhood, who’s just cleaning out his bookshelves and thought “Hey, someone else might want to read these?”
You have a propagandist doing what propagandists always do; that is, propagandize, through any means available, with no scruples or sense of decency. Were you in a different neighborhood, it would be Chick Tracts or PETA literature or Qurans or Bibles or Scientology literature or Greenpeace literature or Infowars/Alex Jones stickers. There’s no end to the number of causes which will clog up any public or private forum open to them in order to spread their ideas.
You got the short end of the stick with the David Duke stuff, but now you get to practice something all librarians do: collections management and weeding.
At the brick and mortar library I volunteer at there is an after hours slot for book returns. Every morning they find several pamphlets from a particular super church in the area. And during election seasons; candidate paraphernalia. Straight to the trash.
Makes things a little more interesting, I guess. Many of them are bombarded with last year’s Danielle Steel books, microwave cookbooks from the 1970s, etc.
Once in a while, my library gets something “weird” donated, something that isn’t appropriate to put in the self-serve bookstore, and we deal with it as we see fit. One thing that I ALWAYS discard are books from the “Babywise” series, and so far, I have yet to see any library volunteer, parent or not, disagree with me. Among other things, this parenting technique recommends that babies, even newborns, be fed, changed, and otherwise cared for on a strict schedule, because children need to learn that they can’t have everything they want right when they want it. :dubious: That last statement is true, but NOT when they’re newborns! Babies have died because their parents followed this philosophy to the letter. :mad:
p.s. I’ve been doing this for 6 years, and I have NEVER seen a Trump-“authored” book of any kind slide down our chute. One of our volunteers did, however, usher at a local campaign event about a year before he was “elected”, and she said it was the scariest crowd she’d ever seen there; they reeked of cigarette smoke and as she put it, “I now know who watches the Kardashians and those jungle survival programs.”
If someone would rather have an autographed David Duke book than $50, I’d gladly relieve them of their money. Do so in a manner that gets their address but doesn’t give them yours. Then a couple of weeks later send them a card that says: “A donation of $50 has been made in your name to the United Negro college Fund”.
Someone wanted to put a Little Free Library in front of our city Rec center last year, and was pissed when then mayor said no. His reasoning was that as soon as questionable content went in there, the city would be in a lot of trouble. I’m disheartened to know that his instincts were right about people
I think they’re an awesome idea tho. In fact this morning I volunteered for a few hours at a big LFL provider in Cleveland.
I’m glad you guys are diligent about policing yours!
Some fine folks a few blocks from me have one out in their yard on the corner, for about 2-3 years now. Lots of children’s books, romance and spy novels seem to end up in it.
I’ve fished some of the books out of the bushes down the block and returned them to the box. Pisses me off and I’d better not see anyone doing it.
What do you mean by “a big LFL provider”? Is it a place that sells the kits to build them, or distributes books for them, or what?
On a similar note, a church in my town used one as a food and supplies pantry, mostly for paper products because they aren’t heat-sensitive, and it’s been vandalized, more than once. :mad:
While I can understand the person who maintains/set up a free library having a serious problem with this, I would personally support the inclusion of these materials in REAL libraries. (Not in the general circulation shelves, but the Reference stacks.) Some forms of knowledge should be maintained as cautionary tales. How would one be able to understand the opposition to Duke if there was no access to the historical record of his views? His career as a national figure pre-dates the widespread use of the Internet.
