I’m generally a supporter of the free-market. It is actually one of our founding principles and our first ambassadors to Europe fought hard for free markets for our new country. There are some things, however, that perhaps shouldn’t have to bend to market pressure. Like the great literature and events which contributed to the shaping of our nation, for example.
You can’t find “Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings” at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or “The Education of Henry Adams” at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson’s “Final Harvest”? Don’t look to the Kingstowne branch.It’s not that the books are checked out. They’re just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them.
As the citizens of Fairfax, VA demand more books on tape, CDs and other multimedia, precious shelf space is being found by removing unpopular books that the computer shows haven’t been checked out enough to warrant the space they take up. Although librarians have so far decided to keep them, Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” are also on the list of books which haven’t been checked out in at least two years. That slates them for consideration for disposal.
So, should public libraries model themselves after businesses such as Barnes & Nobles, stocking what sells? Or should they continue with their tradition of providing communities with a “core collection for the cultural education of [their] communit[ies]?”
What’s a homeschooler to do when all the great books we look forward to sharing with our children are weeded out to make way for John Grisham and whatever Oprah happens to be reading? On the other hand, maybe it is time for a trip to Fairfax, VA. While the smallest of their branch libraries is discarding 700 books per month, I’m sure there are some deals to be had on exactly the kind of books I’m most likely to be interested it.
Of course, I must also ask what is wrong with a culture that prefers computers, meeting spaces and private reading carrels at their local libraries to actual books. As Joseph Brodsky said,
Hat Tip: The Liberty Papers
Related Tags: libraries, homeschooling, books, culture
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Hi Dana,
Well, I’m right next to Fairfax, VA so I’ll keep my eyes open for you
We have pretty much given up on the library system, and we have one of the best in the country, in favor of the Internet, eBay, and the used book store. I think that our Library is being used more as an early intervention tool (think Head Start) than as a place for higher learning. Our library is always crowded (which I think is great), but it caters mostly to our non-native population and ESL students.
As a homeschooler, especially in the Northern Virginia area, we have resources that are not available to *normal* students… namely, we have the time to identify and procure our reading material rather than be stuck with a school-defined reading list and matching library. So, if a particular book isn’t easily available, we can plan ahead and get it through our network of friends, ILL, eBay, or one of the dozens of used bookstores out there. In fact, sometimes it’s almost more fun for the kids and I to find the book, than it is to read it. We assembled the entire Rosemary Sutcliff library by ordering it book by book from used book dealers. Great fun!!
I guess what I’m getting at is that the nature of information itself is what’s changing, and part of a good modern education is teaching our kids the how to access primary materials using the resources were not available to us when we were their age.
Ross
OMG Dana, We’ve got a big problem you know, as the schools get dumbed down so do our libraries. Do you know that in Mark Twain’s backyard (literally) there is a Hartford high school that did not even have a copy of Tom Sawyer in their school library.. When the Mark Twain House museum found out about it they were irate and were compelled to buy an entire collection of Twain’s writings and donate it to the school!
But more shocking than that is that the West Hartford Public Library has comic book versions of some classics (like Moby Dick) in the Teen Library instead of the unabridged versions. Oh but they have multiple copies of contemporary trash.
The librarian said the unabridged versions were not being taken out so they got rid of them. It’s appalling really.
I was able to check out The Devil Wears Prada from my library. We live in a small town - I wonder what they had to get rid of to make room for this book.
an abridged version of Gulliver’s Travels (cut out some of the political satire), but we have also read Moby Dick, Treasure Island, The Wizard of Oz, and Ozma of Oz. I bought White Fang at a sale at my B&N - we’re reading that next. (3 for $10 on unabridged classics. I got White Fang, the Jungle, and Crime and Punishment). I bought it so we could read it at our leisure… I didn’t even look at the library!
Barnes and Noble, interestingly, has the classics. Usually by 3 or 4 different publishers (pocket sized, illustrated, hard back with notes, paperback). I think B&N even have their own “house” publisher.
Very sad, especially the dumbed down versions. We did read the children (5, 7, and
I bought the others because I had never read them. They weren’t on ANY reading list I ever had - and I took two AP courses (Language Comp. and Literature) as well as 3 years of Honors English! I think that’s a problem as well. Judy Blume books appeared on my HIGH SCHOOL reading lists, but Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Austen didn’t. (This was 10 years ago… wonder what they have now?)
However, if I request any book at my local library, they will get it for me (eventually) through interlibrary loan. Maybe we should just check out the classics to make sure they get checked out!
Thanks, Ross. I’m always up for primary source documents, and prefer older histories…some of the stuff written in the 1800s is great. If that book on Lincoln’s writing and speeches comes up, I’d definitely be interested!
Of course, a lot of that kind of stuff is available on the internet. One of the pluses of our technology, I guess. The Education of Henry Adams, for example, is available in its entirety online. But it is rather tedious reading off a screen and I just love a good book in my hand. Especially the smell of those old ones hardly anyone ever checks out.
Judy, that’s amazing. That whole area is so studded with Mark Twain, it is hard to imagine that not every citizen has his complete works. Our whole culture is so dumbed down…I have an interesting book on the matter I’ll probably discuss as I get further into it. But we won’t need to burn these books should our government ever progress to that point…the only people who will have ever heard of them will be some dotty old gray-haired professors and a few homeschool graduates. And we know they are all dotty to begin with.
Milehimama…I love those books. I haven’t tackled Gulliver’s Travels, yet, but we may soon. WalMart even has some of these (Dalmation Press), but alas, they too are the abridged versions. How do you abridge a book like that? I used to have a collection of Reader’s Digest versions of classics…sickening, really. Our required reading included Shakespeare, Austen, Jane Eyre, a whole bunch of old English poetry, Canterbury Tales and stuff like that. But then, I was in honors/AP courses as well. We still had summer reading lists which numbered 10+ several hundred page books.
You know what is really sad ? Britannica stopped making their “Annals of America” set .. that had a copy of all kinds of speeches and letters and other “primary sources”.
My son got one of their last sets and when I get a few bucks I will buy a used set on Ebay or something.
Thank you for highlighting degradation of American’s public libraries. We were so disturbed here in Gwinnett County, GA, by the exact trend described in the Washington Post that we pulled out old library records, started a website http://www.gcplwatch.org and complained at the top of our lungs until the library director was finally fired. Now, thanks to a library board willing to buck the trend, we’re returning to “a more traditional library.” Hallelujah!
And, by the way, I’m a homeschooling mother of 3 also. Once person can make a difference.
Amen to that, Denise! One person can certainly make a difference. Human history bears testament to that. There are so many events in our history where a course was taken because of the dedicated leadership of a single individual, it gives me hope that many of these negative trends can be stopped.
Education…or simply knowledge of what is happening…goes further than many realize. I remember the “banned books” displays at our university bookstore and library to highlight some efforts at suppression of ideas. Why not a “trashed books” display?