How do you get rid of books? One of the many challenges of my job: I have limited shelf space and every title must justify itself. Some librarians use copyright date or circulation history as a guide and dump titles that haven't moved in years. Ouch. So I read blogs where other librarians tackle this question for guidance.
Librarian Adrienne, for example, has an example of a dated beginning reader which reassures a latchkey child that the awful sirens and scary footsteps on the stairs aren't anything to worry about when home alone. Especially fun is Awful Library Books. Take a look at this one, for which the librarian has provided the title Long John Silverstein:
Hey Brian, The Dagger Quick needs a companion series: you could cover all the world's religions in a pirate format! What are you waiting for?
Awful Library Books also features the book May I? Please! Thank You!: A Children's Book of Manners by Joy Wilt. Reminds me of Goofus and Gallant from Highlights, except that the pictures are bizarre:
(Caption: "Careless Carrie writes or scratches on other people's property whenever she feels like it.")
Not that many years ago, I found a biography of Nelson Mandela on the shelves, circa 1989, for a child who began his "research" by copying this sentence: "No one knows what Mandela looks like, for he has not had a photo taken since he was imprisoned in 1962."
Recently, a colleague gave me a copy of Alan Garner's 1967 novel The Owl Service. The rich Welsh setting and mythological references led to its selection, in 2007, as one of the 10 most important British children's novels of the past 70 years. The problem? I don't think our kids could handle all the smoking. No, not the smoking, just lots of lines like
"I need to get some fags for Mum" and "Do you have any fags?" Right.
Today, with Mitt Romney much on my mind, I grabbed the nonfiction Landmark title The Coming of the Mormons, copyright 1953, and flipped through the pages. Get this:
"There would always be some red men, just as there would always be some white men, who were born troublemakers. So, although the Mormons wished to live at peace with the Indians, and though they tried to do so, they could not avoid all Indian wars."
"Red men?" Yowza! And meanwhile scholarship has a lot more to say about who perpetrated various massacres. Must find a good Mormon book fast.
And now a video from the Brigham Young University Library (Mormons on my mind) where you can find BUCKETLOADS of databases (and, hopefully, an up-to-date collection):
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