I was reading an article about the efforts by people not to ban books. While I think the sentiment is good-natured, as a helper at my local library, this is actually very problematic. People donate to us all the time, as is how libraries work. Sometimes the books are unpopular, unproductive, harmful, or just low tier.
I would never apply this logic to human beings, all humans have value if the system knows how to channel them correctly, but books are inanimate objects where their expected purpose is to be read (if you were to say a book is useful on the basis it could be used for something like ripping the pages out for wiping a floor for example, that would make its usefulness as a book cease). Often we are over capacity from the donations, so once a year we have a book sale at the church (libraries and churches getting along? Crazy, right?), but even then, a lot just isn’t sold, and we’re forced to either give them to another holding place or, in the worst case scenario, cremate or trash them. I am all for free speech, but freedom to produce speech is different from freedom to preserve speech, and I’m sure even the ancient Romans produced a lot of scribbly nonsense.
Suppose you were in my shoes and the library could preserve anything forever but not everything forever. What criteria would you use in order to decide what media (books, movies, games, etc.) gets to stay and what has to go?
Value.
They obviously have value if people want to read them (they’re popular). Or they could have artistic value. Or document something and it’s important to keep them around because the info inside might be important later on.
You can discard any books like Excel 2006 or Windows 8 beginners guide. I’d say they don’t have any value anymore. Or like bad cooking books that no one reads anyways.
Also a library might not be an archive at the same time. So you could focus on which books actually have some use for the patrons and judge by if they’re being used/read.
And I’d like to add: Selecting books and tidying up to make space for new popular books… And banning books are two very different things. Banning books for grown-ups isn’t a good idea. Never, and under no circumstances. Unless it’s 1933 and you’re the nazis.
Why are you specifying ‘for grown ups’? Banning books at all is wrong, if you give them an excuse to do it for children, they’ll just do something crazy like classify all teenagers as ‘children’ so less people have access to books at the most important stage of their lives…
Oh wait, they did that already.
You’re right. I specified that because there are things like protection for minors, and I didn’t want someone to defuse my argument by arguing about one exception from the rule that could be construed as banning books. And I think that’s a fake argument. Obviously you don’t read an erotic novel to your 8yo kid. But at high-school age you’re pretty much allowed to start making own decisions. At least well-equipped to read about diversity and how other parts of the world work. Or telling fact from fiction or consuming art.
And I think at college lever or once you’re officially an adult, there is little to no reason to keep information from you. That’s something the nazis did, the Taliban does and other suppressive regimes and dictatorships. And these days we’re discussing to do that in the USA, at least to the people who actually have time at hand to read books and learn about the world. Which becomes more difficult once you’re older, have a stressful job etc. So that’s exactly how to deal maximum damage without going full autocracy on all citizens.
And this kind of behaviour is something I struggle to relate with. I live far away from the USA in Europe. And while we certainly have idiots here, I don’t see a major debate on keeping school-kids stupid, by stripping away their access to information. And I mean it’s not where someone is from, everyone from the USA I’ve talked with also wouldn’t accept that. I guess I’m just not talking that much to the idiots an bigots.