Libraries for whom?
The eyes of the literary world are on the Fairfax County Public Library system in northern Virginia, and those eyes are set in a cold, hard stare. A recent Washington Post article highlighted the library system's practice of removing books that haven't been checked out in two years and either dumping them or putting them up for sale. It doesn't matter whether the book in question is a classic by Hemingway or a potboiler by Ludlum, although the latter is far less likely to hit the scrap heap. This has provoked howls of outrage.
Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of technology. Integrated library system software from SyrsiDynix in Huntsville, Alabama (ever notice how much of the bad in corporate America these days comes from the South? Just an observation) is used to check out books, probably via barcodes, so it is no great shakes to program the software to spit out a literary death list of books gone unread in two years. The outrage stems from the many classics consigned to the scrap heap, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Both authors won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
I suspect more libraries than we authors care to imagine engage in this practice. My parents in Holland, Michigan, periodically check out my book, Unseen Danger, from Herrick District Library to keep it from meeting a similar fate (although they tell me last time they went to do this somebody had it out). I would find it quite depressing to have my book tossed to make way for some trash popular novel of the moment.
The issue, expressed brilliantly by writer John J. Miller in the Wall Street Journal of Jan. 3, is whether it is right for public libraries to cater primarily to middlebrow public tastes. Is it right for a library branch to buy five copies of some trash novel to meet public demand, possibly bumping books of more lasting quality. He argues that popular books are incredibly cheap and available these days. For libraries to buy them anyway, he says, subsidizes tightwad middle class patrons who could easily afford to buy the books. He argues that libraries must be cultural repositories where people can go to find knowledge and enlightenment. Librarians, he says, need to use their training to select and retain books the public ought to read, not just the ones they want to read.
Newspapers over the last 10 years have gone through a similar wrenching shift aimed at appeasing the supposed interests of the masses, who are generally defined as middlebrow white suburbanites. We in the business are told we must be "reader driven," not use our training and knowledge to decide what news is best for the public to read. In the new regime, the public orders the hamburger and we deliver it, and don't ask if they want fries, too. The result, predictably, has been dumbed-down newspapers with less and less real news, especially government news. Someday someone will figure out that the newspaper industry's destructive turn against government news was driven as much by conservative politics as any supposed public desire for more chicken dinner reporting and "news you can use." Journalists can't uncover the next Watergate or Jack Abramoff scandal if they can't get the stories in the paper.
For those of you who care about books and libraries, there is something you can do. The next time you're at the library, check out a classic. Even if you don't read it, check it out and then return it in a few days. Spare it from the bonfire so your descendants can still read it.