It’s unfortunate that people believe modern libraries are the educational and literary sanctums envisioned by their founders rather than modern entertainment an

It’s unfortunate that people believe modern libraries are the educational and literary sanctums envisioned by their founders rather than modern entertainment and community centers. Search for “deaccessioning” and “equity based weeding” and you will find all the information you could wish for. The classics are being thrown into dumpsters or pulped to make room for more computers and Sarah J Maas. In one particularly egregious Canadian case, all books published before 2008 were destroyed. In many cases this is politically driven. Perhaps you know how the use to work, but not how they do now. It’s very grim. Many invaluable niche works, particularly of local history but also of technical subjects, have now been destroyed forever by librarians. The assumption too is that everything is probably digitized somewhere so it doesn’t even matter. Cultural and political and funding concerns as actual literacy has declined have completely subsumed that original purpose of libraries. > You haven't checked, don't know how to check, or don't know what a "local library SYSTEM" is. There’s no need to call me a liar. I read quite a lot and end up buying nearly all my books nowadays because the library system rarely had even very notable older books, but I still check. It takes about 30 seconds to type into the collection search bar. I did, in fact, look before I wrote that comment. Perhaps you should have not been so sure when you wrote your original comment that it was definitely there. Meanwhile, Maas has at least several dozen and I would suppose a few hundred copies of her books in the system. So, according to you it’s no big deal if the book is in the public library - well I can assure you Maas is several times more likely to be in any local public library than Hitler, so it sounds like there’s nothing to be concerned about. Your comment is entirely applicable to these Maas books: “ its not there because it is readily available in many US public and college libraries. If it isn't in your institution's collection your librarian will happily help you order it from from a nearby one.”