What a lovely note to begin a year on...

[anghara]

mjlayman writes:

"The Fairfax County Library is disposing of a lot of classic books, like To Kill a Mockingbird. They're not getting checked out often enough, so they're making room for the books the public likes."

Out with the old, in with the new. If you'll forgive me fro royally mixing both media and metaphor, let's just tear down the Sistine Chapel so we can put up a monument to the Da Vinci Code.

Feh.

Comments

[little-foxy.livejournal.com]

That is so sad... so the next generation won't get a chance to read the classics, unless the schools force them too in class...

oh dear... a reflection of the current push button for instant gratification and the need to be fasionable and trendy!

*sigh*

"Let the dead bury the dead"

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

It's not up to librarians to tell people what they should read. Many of the classics are now dated, and primarily of interest in the context of English Literature or History as a whole.

For example, I love Malory's "Le Morte De Arthur", but if I wanted a teenage boy to read, I'd start him on Conan, or Warhammer tie-ins.

People who want to read Dickens can usually afford to buy their own copies secondhand, e.g. from library sales... :)

Re: "Let the dead bury the dead"

[anghara.livejournal.com]

It's not up to librarians to tell people what they should read

Granted, but it also should not be the librarians who tell people what NOT to read, and by withdrawing access to things that are LONG out of print the libraries ensure that they will be releagated to the dusty reaches of oblivion. the NEW books, the hot books, they are available everywhere right now, and those who wish to read 'em should be able to get hold of 'em anywhere in this contemporary world. Not so for the classics - some of them might be available on the Net but not all have been made digitally available and some might never be. And it's usually the "fun" ones which are kept - no library will stow Dickens' "Christmas Carol", but they might well bury things like "Great Expectations" and things like "To Kill a Mockingbird", with its "difficult" social theme and its stigma of having been "homework" to a generation of rebellious kids who didn't want to spend a sunmy Sunday afternoon indoors reading, don't stand a chance. And yet it is the library which is often the only source to be had for hard to find or out of print books like that. IF the libraries abdicate responsibility... what exactly is the library's purpose?