no picture bc I’m at home rn, but I recently started working at the Library in my small town. we’ve been trying to remove the outdated or poorly circulated books and replace them with more recent ones and ones that will circulate better. in the process of doing this my boss found an anti-vax book from 2008 that we got as a donation in the early 2010s (we know bc it says in the computer) and the last time it had been checked out was like 2 months ago and it has some the best circulation of any of our books. even worse, we dont just get a book and put it straight on the shelf. donations are sorted through by volunteers, offered to the library if the volunteers think they’d be good, and then have to be accepted by the director. the previous director added the book to the system personally. a librarian did this. thankfully my boss, the new director, decided it was 1) too old to keep around, 2) too damaged to keep around (fucked up spine), and 3) bullshit, so she put it in the pile of books we are deleting from the system.
Wild to think anti vaxxers read
Anti-vaxxers often do a lot of reading, ime. The stuff they read is often bullshit written by scammers or other people who drank the Kool-aid, but I think the “research” they do is a big part of the anti-vaxx culture. My view is that many who are drawn into conspiracy theories end up there due to a diminished sense of agency, and that the “research” is key to them feeling more in control — it gives them a false sense of understanding in which they can take all their bad feelings about how the world is, and construct a worldview in which they feel more oriented.
It reminds me a lot of the line “antisemitism is the socialism of fools”, though I feel like this is more like “anti-vax is the antiauthoritarianism of fools”. It’s frustrating because in some ways, they’re so close to understanding the ways in which the world is super fucked up, but they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and hide in a fortress of ignorance instead.
this sums up my experience with them pretty well too
Of course they read. Do you think those ticked tock subtitles are going to read themselves when they “do their own research”?
Fantastic. Good you and your boss. But “bullshit” should have been the first reason.
In a public library unfortunately it had to be a “better” argument than that. Given the two previous reasons it could be discarded. If people come looking for it you can say without a doubt that it needed to be discarded. However they could try to replace it. Then it becomes a more contentious.
I want to second this - public libraries are still often funded by municipalities, and those municipalities might have political concerns that mean for every book on ‘liberal’ topics, you have to have some Bill O’Reilly psuedo-intellectual hatemag - ethically, this follows Ranganathan’s principle of ‘every reader their book and every book their reader’, and practically - allows public libraries to say 'look! We don’t censor anything - we’ve got four copies of whatever slop ben shapiro wrote, so it makes sense that we’re not gonna censor ‘all boys aren’t blue’
I would say it’s likely the old director who personally allowed the book realized this.
It’s a very loving ethos of neutrality that it’s imperative public libraries work hard to walk.
its harder than that too because you can’t really be neutral, you have to be what the political majority in the area that pays your bills thinks neutral looks like. in our case, thats redneckistan. thankfully most of the ones that would cause issues dont go to the library anyway (although for literacy reasons I’d still rather they did) but if some of the homeschoolers parents decide to raise hell on Facebook it could be bad for us. they are pretty dependent on us though bc ours is the library they have available for their kids but they still could do that if they wanted.
If you ban books that you disagree with, you are a book banner.
as a public facility, the library is supposed to prioritize what the public is using. because the book was getting used, bullshit can’t even be official.
Point taken. I’m curious, in what section was this book? Hopefully not medicine. Fantasy is far more fitting.
idk what the Dewey decimal on it was but it was in nonfiction bc we only have fiction, nonfiction, paperbacks, and fiction and nonfiction again for junior, ya, easy, and Spanish.
Watch RFK JR pick a fight with your town.
nd it has some the best circulation of any of our books
God, but that’s just sad and, well, infuriating.
its especially concerning since we get a lot of people who are the bad kind of homeschoolers. the trump books and audiobooks dont move at all thankfully.
Damn. I was homeschooled for a year while sick, and my parent nuts trying to find the absolute best material so I didn’t fall behind. It’s repulsive that any parent would purposefully give shoddy education. That’s the stuff you always think is relegated to weird religious cults somewhere, which, I suppose, should be a wake up call about what we’re currently dealing with.
yeah, homeschooling needs some more regulation.
So, the sad story has a happy ending. Yay for science, and for you!
Ugh shit like this kills, my uncle died during COVID because he refused to get vaccinated, still makes my blood boil thinking about it
Thanks, Little Hero!
I found a vibe book in my local library and also donated it to the trash
I’m glad it went the way it did, because otherwise I’d be suggesting you get clumsy with your next coffee
It’s not necessarily bad to have on hand. Sometimes you need to reference bullshit.
Not that I think this was the primary purpose, of course.
So what happens if I damage a book from the library? Just curious.
at our library something like a small tear is generally fine but if its major damage you are fined whatever it’ll cost us to replace the book right then edit: spelling
Appreciate you and people like you standing up for science. Keep up the good work.
Should have moved it to fiction and placed a large disclaimer sticker on it. Or moved it to the adult section. If someone comes asking for it they have to get it from the naughty stuff.
we dont have an ‘adult’ section, just regular fiction and nonfiction and accompanying sections for ya and junior. i have no idea what a ya nonfiction book is and neither does anyone else who works there rn so nothing has been going to that section.
Time for a good old fashioned book burning!
Hard disagree. No books should ever be burned. Don’t legitimize the practice.
this poisonous trash needs to be removed from existence. the difference is this should be quietly burned in private, not as a public spectacle.
so yeah, burn it. quietly. then it won’t be legitimizing anything
But these books are 3) bullshit.
Nah, I advocate book burning.
Specifically second hand Harry Potter books to ensure Joanne Rowling gets nothing. She advocates for the Nazis burning books on transgender studies, so she deserves to have that paid back in kind.
why second-hand? those are the ones she already won’t get anything from.
