I disagree with this. Libraries are notorious for being open about their processes; they will happily reveal flows of materials, down to the item.
Unlike digital world where storage is cheap, in physical world it is limited. Thus focus on what the customers want is reasonable.
Archival libraries are different game. There keeping at least one copy is often reasonable.
Librarians try to “market” books based on what they think the public wants or needs.
They try to assure a variety of books put forward, with a special emphasis on “good for you” books.
Books deed as “not good for you” are likely to be shelved in the back.
in practice, libraries use the Dewey decimal system, but that excluded the many “exhibits” of “good for you” material.
I don’t mean “good for you” in a good or bad way. It’s simply what the librarian believes will be most helpful to the readers.
There are currently some very real and important controversies in public libraries that have no clear solution.
Article is about a librarian in Virginia. OP is commenting about practice in India. Unless there is some secret code to global librarian conduct, chances are you're all correct.
I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed. They offer plans to build little libraries, and I hope to build some. “Owner” will have to build the supports, though.
Do these work for kids' books? Whenever I've seen them geared towards adults, the content is absolute crap.
I had a lot of good books that I finished reading and wouldn't realistically touch again.
Whenever I went to browse for some books I would leave one of them in exchange. Over time, the quality went up because other people started doing the same.
To be honest, I did curate the available books at it as well. Obvious crap (self-published conspiracy theory stuff) was thrown out. At some point you will also have to simple throw out some old ones if they never get taken. Space is limited and a 50 year old book that is collecting dust is not useful to anyone.
My wife is an elementary school reading teacher and runs a yearly family book night where she takes book donations she gets all year and fills a bunch of portable tables in the gym with kids (and adult) books that are free for the taking. What is left over is taken (by me) to that local company and dumped in huge bins. If you are looking to get rid of a bunch of books I'd also suggest contacting your local schools to see if they take donations.
(Yes, I know about the phrases written below every singe one of them. They're probably being taken just as seriously as ToS.)
If they cared, they wouldn’t post publicly or the service would not allow that message to embedded.
An enforceable request is called a “demand”, and unless you’re actually capable of enforcing it, it is in fact still just a request.
It would have been polite to honor the request, but they are under no obligation to do so.
Don’t make public posts if you don’t want them publicly displayed.
Why can the post even be embedded at all in this case? If Gizmodo was forced to screenshot it to circumvent that you might have a point.
ggm•5d ago