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Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway?

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.
- By Lisa Rein

Comments

Youve got to make room on the shelves for the libros en espanol, ya know.

By rorschach | Jan 1, 2007 8:44:46 PM | Request Removal

There was nothing in the article about being pressed for space for books in Spanish. The libraries need space for DVDs, videotapes, books on tape, and other audiovisual media, as well as for computers and individual study carrels or work stations. People who use the library are asking for these other media and places to use them. Personally, I think the Fairfax County library system is going too far in getting rid of books, especially classic ones, that havent been checked out recently. Libraries may buy five copies of a best seller because there is so much demand for it now, but they will likely discard three or four of them in a couple of years when the book is no longer so popular. But people depend on libraries to have books that arent available in popular bookstores. We NEED to be able to find classic books somewhere.

By coaklesl | Jan 1, 2007 10:12:01 PM | Request Removal

The list of weeded books in the sidebar is really sad. I remember how I first read Doctor Zhivago in photocopied form - and at the time when the mere possession of the book was punishable by up to three years in GULAG. Also, its a little ironic that while back in the 1980s I had no trouble finding To Kill A Mockinbird in the original English in a Moscow library, it is now unavailable in libraries in Washington suburbs.

By wapo | Jan 1, 2007 10:20:43 PM | Request Removal

A chief librarian who throws out Aristotle claiming a book is not forever is a barbarian and a fool.

By ed6061 | Jan 1, 2007 10:50:15 PM | Request Removal

The county is not getting rid of books. If you want to check out The Aeneid, go to your local library and ask for it. If they dont have a copy of it, one will be at the library waiting for you within two days. How hard is that? Dont forget, when they get rid of these books, they sell them. Good time to stock up your private library.

By mcleangirl | Jan 2, 2007 12:10:27 AM | Request Removal

When you use the library, dont put books back on the shelf, some libraries, university ones especially make a record of the books taken off. For public libraries, if you use it, check it out and dump it back.

By OldAtlantic | Jan 2, 2007 1:02:14 AM | Request Removal

The same thing happens with genes. Immigrants substitute for births. At 300 million stable population with 75 year lifetime, 4 milllion people die per year. If there are 2 million entrants, and no growth in population, there are 2 million births. 2 million births over 4 million deaths gives a genetic survival ratio of 1/2. For 25 years from birth to parent, we get 3 cycles to go to 1/8 of the starting genes in 75 years. This extinction policy means all good books are wiped out if they have a two year dry spell. The shorter the cycle, the faster all books eventually go out of the system when they hit their dry spell. Once a book leaves it can never come back. So eventually all good textbooks, classics, etc. go away, and we are left only with trash. As this happens, different people use the library, so it becomes the place of the lowest common denominator. This is how cities and civilizations die.

By OldAtlantic | Jan 2, 2007 1:07:45 AM | Request Removal

We will end up with one book at the end of this process, the Quran.

By OldAtlantic | Jan 2, 2007 1:08:52 AM | Request Removal

This is disgusting. Since when has market forces been a reliable indicator of great art? If the OJ book came out, it would essentially replace Faulkner on the shelves. Oh, and Ive been planning on reading Dr. Zhivago finally after years of loving the movie. Removing Aristotle isnt a real concern. Chances are that volume didnt have the translations you wanted. Or, if translation is no issue to you, all his writings are available online from some quick Googling. By the way, in what way is this a political issue, lee8798? Youve got axes to grind in a lot of places, it seems, but its an enormous stretch at best to blame this on corporate America or the GOP . . .

By aymill | Jan 2, 2007 4:23:05 AM | Request Removal

All of high culture is collapsing in America. Like all previous empires, the weight of the past is rejected and things become more and more deformed, vapid and cruder. The beginning of the cutlural rot in the Roman empire wasnt in 400 AD, it began in 100 AD. Mindless copies of classic Greek art became increasingly barbaric, literature became weaker, science became superstitions and the great Greek library in Alexandria was burned down during a religious riot. We are at about 150 AD here. Still a mighty empire but in serious decline.

By falkenfelsen | Jan 2, 2007 6:48:56 AM | Request Removal

This bears examining in context of what is on reading lists for K-12 schools. These books should have been checked out as part of reading requirements in our schools. Alcott, Twain, Dickens, Faulkner, Francesca Lia Block? The last name is up there with Harlequin Romances only trashier with raves, etc and a staple in the FCPS libraries. To the WP ... Grisham isnt even garbage compared to the real junk my tax dollars support and almost any well educated person could write if they were so inclined to make a living off trash books for teens. That has become an emerging market and did not exist when I was young.

By mydchome | Jan 2, 2007 7:15:21 AM | Request Removal

This is a perfect application for digital technology if only book publishers would get with the program...books should be digitized before being discarded and available to library patrons from server farms...the technology is not all that complex, but publishers prevent this by claiming copyright violations...better in their view to throw it out than to scan it...

By ldirrb | Jan 2, 2007 8:17:28 AM | Request Removal

I understand why a library has to discard books that arent being read. Its just so sad that an era is ending. Practically the only people who read the classics are students who have to buy them at exorbitant prices. Still when I go to a Shakespeare play, Im glad that its in print on my bookshelf so that I can read it before the performance.

By jmn | Jan 2, 2007 8:54:00 AM | Request Removal

The over arching change is that EDUCATION in the USA is out. Job training in IN. People are products to be sold to the highest bidder - a job. THIS IS SLAVERY, pure and simple. So, who needs Platos, The Republic? A nation of sleep walkers headed for obscurity. z-z-z-z-z.

By jmm430069 | Jan 2, 2007 8:57:21 AM | Request Removal

How about if we check out a classic along with our other books every time we go to the library? That will save them. Lets make it a habit.

By jmn | Jan 2, 2007 8:57:53 AM | Request Removal

Having two children recently graduate from area public schools I can say that the reason people dont read Aristotle is that they never heard of him in the school. We have banished the classics from the curriculum in favor of vapid magical realism novels. The classics provide foundations in how to reason, ethics, rhetoric for public speaking, politics, how democracies work, grammar, vocabulary foundations for the sciences, and for thinking. The problem with that is that people who know those things are hard to manipulate and control. Congratulations to the political correct education systems of Fairfax and Montgomery Counties. You have finally achieved victory in your campaign to dumb down the children of America. All hail Paris Hilton - Queen of the New Order.

By vstanford3 | Jan 2, 2007 8:58:49 AM | Request Removal

It is inconceivable that with all of the destruction to libraries in the Gulf coast region that these books could not be relocated there or in other areas of the country. Realizing that this would be an expense that the sending libraries can ill afford could not private funds be sought to solve the problem?

By jpard.ri | Jan 2, 2007 9:01:56 AM | Request Removal

The heritage of Western civilization is being discarded. Some day an archaeologist will dig up the remains of our civilization and wonder how we fell.

By dianna-penny | Jan 2, 2007 9:27:31 AM | Request Removal

I agree with both sides here. Yes, we are losing the classics in favor of Spanish books and teen junk. At the same time, libraries are aping the book industry where, as Calvin Trillin noted, QUOTE The average trade book has a shelf life of between milk and yogurt, except for books by any member of the Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives UNQUOTE. The libraries are trying to win patrons, and this is the way they have to go, given the dumbing down of the school curricula.

By mediaskeptic | Jan 2, 2007 9:41:11 AM | Request Removal

To jpard.ri, who suggested sending the books to libraries in the Gulf Coast region -- that might be doable in Mississippi, Alabama or Texas, but dont waste your time on Louisiana. I have first-hand knowledge of a donation by a book publishing consortium of $5,000 of books to a Lousiana parish library system. The books have disappeared, without any explanation or word of thanks from the librarians. Sold? Taken home? Who knows.

By mediaskeptic | Jan 2, 2007 9:43:45 AM | Request Removal

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