Bibliofetishization...

The prospect of weeding books from your library can be daunting and intimidating. Usually I don't feel this way because of the work involved or the removal of out-dated tomes that have had zero checkouts in the last 10 years, but rather due to the looks of judgement from school staff and parent volunteers. I understand not wanting to throw out a perfectly clean, readable, cherished book. These are not those. The books that I am tossing into the nearest blue bin are usually biased, ancient, stained, smelly publications that you wouldn't dream of buying, even at a dollar sale. Oh, and the information in them is no longer accurate. Some even have mold. So why are my teaching co-workers diving into the large recycle bins to 'save' them??

From the  March 13, 2014 article by  ANNOYED LIBRARIAN 

Why People Hate Weeding Books
What is it about book weeding that gets library patrons so panicked? I can sort of understand the furor over that weeding project gone awry in Illinois last year, but it seems to happen all the time.

“I just want the books to have a good home,” they’ll say. The librarians are thinking that a dumpster is a good home for garbage. Leave them in the dumpster on the way out. “Impossible!”

A late example is the library at Emporia State University in Kansas, which has had its weeding project halted until an internal auditor can examine the situation. Some people were complaining, and it must have been bad considering this sentence: “the library has slated a good amount of books to take out of the library, but not in the book burning style that many have imagined.”

Were people really imagining book burning?

I know it’s Kansas and all, where just like Arizona conservatives proposed anti-gay legislation and then voted it down when they realized how much like pre-Civil Rights Era southerners it made them seem, but hating gays so much you want to deprive them of civil rights isn’t necessarily the same thing as burning books.

Well, maybe. Anyway, this isn’t the Kansas legislature, but a bunch of librarians doing the weeding, and librarians are about as fond of burning books as they are of wearing uncomfortable shoes.

The librarians even provide all the standard and irrefutable reasons why a place like Emporia State should weed books: it’s not a research library, space is finite, etc. This isn’t weeding gone awry. It’s just weeding that people notice.

I would think the faculty could figure out that if the library keeps buying physical books and doesn’t have more physical space, something has to go. University libraries aren’t like faculty offices. You can’t just start piling books in random places and hope for the best when finding them.

And although it’s called a university, and even has the prestigious honor of having an ALA-accredited MLS program, it’s not a research library. The only ARL library in Kansas is the University of Kansas.

Therefore, it has no special obligation to keep materials indefinitely, or to build the offsite storage that makes this possible. Heck, maybe even the U. of Kansas doesn’t do that, but it’s still the sort of thing big research libraries do.

Now it could be that people fear they won’t get the material they need for research. That’s a possibility, although since it’s not a research university, they likely don’t have the funding to support everyone’s research.

Instead I suspect the panic is driven by one thing, bibliofetishization. I thought I’d coined that term, by the way, but it got 13 hits on Google, so I guess I didn’t.

Anyway, bibliofetishization, or having a fetish about books if we want to sound less pretentious, seems to be a universal phenomenon, at least among people who read books at all.


How many libraries have had to deal with people offering to donate hundreds of worthless books they found in their granny’s attic because the potential donor couldn’t just throw them out?

People who don’t work with books professionally don’t think of them as commodities. Every book is sacred, and every magazine, too, judging by the old sets of National Geographic people are always trying to donate to libraries.

Thus, while it could be that there’s something alarming at Emporia State, I somehow doubt it. Rational explanations about space and such aren’t working well, either.

It might be time to sit down individually with everyone who hates weeding in the library, offer them a cup of tea and a biscuit, and tell them in a sorrowful voice that the librarians are terribly sorry for making any changes at all, but sometimes, every once in a very long while, we have to make a few changes or else things get chaotic, and nobody wants that.

When Librarians Take to the Roof!

This may be a new present for my school principals!  Attached will be a note:  Prep the ladder!  and send pizza!

M.G. King writes the true tale of Librarian RoseAleta Laurell who sought to bring in the library's reason for being - the children.

From the book: When RoseAleta Laurell begins her new job at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, she is surprised that the children of the town think the library is for adults.

She vows to raise the money for a children's section and spends a week living and working on the library roof, even surviving a dangerous storm.

With the help of the entire town, RoseAleta raises over $39,000 from within the community and across the country.

Today if you look through the front window of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library, you will see shelves stacked full with children's books and tables and chairs just the right size. You will see artwork on the walls, and a row of busy computers.

Best of all, you will always find crowds of children who love to read and learn inside the walls of the oldest library in Texas. 

It seems unfathomable to me that a library would not be about the children.  For adults only?  I have always seen public, and even school libraries, as serving the community.  All people, all ages.  Even within my k-6 elementary schools we have books that are meant to be read-alouds for parents and students.  We have dual language books to promote reading between new arrivals and older generations who may not speak English.  Books are for imparting information, stimulating creativity, teaching literacy and critical thinking.  Books are for bonding, forming relationships with characters and those we read with.  Books help us make memories. Books help us escape a bad day and imagine what wonders tomorrow could bring.  There are no age limits on these things - they apply to the very youngest and very oldest of us all.  For a library to ignore part of the population seems so against the very nature of what a library is.   Librarian on the Roof!  is a great story showing that libraries are  meant to be used and be allowed to bring so much value to it's patrons.

More than a "library" story, this book can be used to inspire our students to create change in their own schools, communities, and world.  It shows what the dedication and determination of an individual can achieve.  It also shows that recognizing a problem exists is not enough...that there are ways to make changes.  

Ms. Laurell on the roof of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in  Lockhart, Texas.