Banned Books discussion

http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_...

This article made me sad. Not exactly about banned books, but still a loss of literature. I want to give all these books a home...

This is really ridiculous! I wish they would just it give it away to me.

Yeah I read that a little while back and was horrified!!!

That is horrible. I'm likely to have nightmares. I can't believe there is no alternative.

I'm going to have nightmares about that!!! It just seems so so wrong!!!

I just don't get why libraries don't just do like a book fair type of thing. I bet people would come and if you set the books at cheap prices I know people would so pay and they would get money. It's like a win win.

Yeah, I've definitely been to some library book fairs (which are always AWESOME and full of great deals). But I guess some libraries feel it's just too much work?

Yeah but you would think they would want the extra income and it would be a way to save these amazing books!

This is sickening and there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE FOR IT. But now that it's being made public, maybe something can be done about it.

Though I don't doubt that burning is still practiced as a way of destroying books for whatever reason, I'm not sure if I would consider "cracked.com" as the authority on the matter. A review of the author's most recent articles for "cracked.com" finds that this story (Oct. 11th) is squeezed between his expose' "6 Mind-Blowing Ways Zombies and Vampires Explain America" (Sept. 6th) and the tell-all "7 Most Questionable 'Haunted' Items on eBay" (Oct. 29).

Amber wrote: "I just don't get why libraries don't just do like a book fair type of thing. I bet people would come and if you set the books at cheap prices I know people would so pay and they would get money. It..."

If you read the article, you'd see the answer to your question.

"The problem is the situation for a library is more complicated than when you just take a bunch of old clothes and unwanted porn down to the Salvation Army. A library book is stamped and bugged and cataloged so that the library knows that it belongs to them. When a book is given away or sold, the library has to go through and remove all that crap, so whoever winds up with it can prove they didn't just steal it off the shelf. "

Yeah but think about it, if you sell a book for about 5 dollars, I know personally I would probably by 4 or 6 which would be like 20-30 dollars. That all adds up quickly which would pay the library back for debugging the books and get rid of them at the same time. Don't worry, I thought my logic through before I said a remark and I did actually read the article thank you. I would not comment on something unless I did.

This is one of those weird, If-I-Had-A-Million-Dollars episodes that seems all too simple... like, if I could, I'd just rent or build me a big ass storage room and warehouse those books for the rest of my life... If no one buys them each by the time I'm dead, at least someone will have a priceless antique that we were all desperate to get rid of in this age of digital reading and e-commerce...

At the same time, at the risk of sounding stupid, although Cracked used to be just a poor man's Mad Magazine and really is not an authority on any subject at all, they do check their facts, if they don't site them at all, as their seemingly dismissive lists have so far come out damn near fool proof when I Googled them...

I assume you are joking when you say you Google the internet to confirm something you read on the internet. If not, we might as well put a torch to entire Library of Congress.

The article does cite numerous news sources to back up what it is saying. Yes, they are Internet news sources, but we can't discredit Internet news sources simply because they are on the Internet. I still trust The Guardian and BBC Internet sources, merely two of the numerous sources cited in this piece.

This is absurd. They just get volunteers to do the cleansing and then run the book sale. This is what we have here. There is a specific nonprofit called Friends of the Library that just deal with raising money for the library and selling the books that the library doesn't want anymore. They work on it all year round for the biannual sale so the books don't accumulate. If you don't have enough volunteers, have a book sale where the price of the book includes scratching out the proof of ownership before you can leave the door. There have to be enough volunteers to help there, especially if they have first dibs at the books.

But if that's too much, why didn't they just recycle them? You can throw books in the recycle bin because they're all paper. Up to 10% of material in the bin can be unrecyclable which is why you can put envelopes with windows in there.You make an appointment with the recycle company and they take everything at once and do the run that day.

I believe that any library that has to throw out this mass of material hasn't planned well or utilized volunteers properly. I'm not saying all books can be sold or used but on this scale it's criminal.

The historical implications of "banning" or even burning books is fascinating! Today, this ties directly to the notion of intellectual property and discussions surrounding e-books . . .

I agree with Kelly any library that has to toss books this way isn't utilizing its resources or planning properly. I live MN and all the libraries near me have book sales every year (they are awesome bc the books are like $0.50 a piece) and the big library in downtown Minneapolis has book store/gift shop thing that sells old library books year round for cheap. This sort of thing is seriously unacceptable.

This was actually happening in the main Manchester library in England too. Although it manly concerns reference books. A lot of my university lecturers have made public their disgust, but many books have already been destroyed. Im sure charities would have gladly taken them, or Amazon. If big libraries are destroying books then you have to wonder whether the majority are doing the same to some degree. Scary.

Zehra wrote: "I agree with Kelly any library that has to toss books this way isn't utilizing its resources or planning properly. I live MN and all the libraries near me have book sales every year (they are aweso..."

What a great idea for a library to have a bookstore which sells old library books year round!!

Kirsty wrote: "This was actually happening in the main Manchester library in England too. Although it manly concerns reference books. A lot of my university lecturers have made public their disgust, but many book..."

Very scary, and totally anathema to intellectuality, sigh.

In some ways it will be positive outcome when all books are made electronic. Maybe the libraries of the future will have massive data bases which can store every book. And it will be case of taking your e-reader in there and having a limited time download. That way nothing gets thrown out, and books are always available, can you imagine never having to wait for a book to come back in? I hope they still print pretty editions of books though, as theres no real substitute for the real thing. The physical book will go back to be the luxury item it was before the 19th century. Strange thought.

Zehra wrote: "I agree with Kelly any library that has to toss books this way isn't utilizing its resources or planning properly. I live MN and all the libraries near me have book sales every year (they are aweso..."

In my city a number of the libraries have a permanent sale cart with a combination of weeded library books and book donations from patrons. The prices range from fifty cents to two dollars. Different branches have different pricing policies. The library employees don't need to remove anything from a library book in order to sell it. They just stamp it "withdrawn". That's sufficient evidence that the book wasn't stolen from the library.

Shomeret wrote: "Zehra wrote: "I agree with Kelly any library that has to toss books this way isn't utilizing its resources or planning properly. I live MN and all the libraries near me have book sales every year (..."

That reminds me of something strange which happened to me a few years ago. I bought a book from an online used bookstore (not going to mention which one) and when I received the book, it said it was from the Hamilton Public Library. Because there was no stamp or the like stating that it had been withdrawn, I wondered wether this book had actually been stolen from the library (and it was, that very book had been listed as missing).

That's horrible, Gundula! I've gotten books on Amazon that are library removals, but they state that in the ad.

Shomeret, our libraries have permanent bookshelves for selling books, but they're all donated, none are pulled from shelves. But then, we have a ginormous sale every year that is so popular people wait in line before it opens.

Kelly - Maybedog wrote: "That's horrible, Gundula! I've gotten books on Amazon that are library removals, but they state that in the ad.

Shomeret, our libraries have permanent bookshelves for selling books, but they're a..."

It was definitely weird, but even weirder was the fact that the library did not want the book returned.

Hunh. Odd.

Kelly - Maybedog wrote: "Hunh. Odd."

I did not mind, as it was a book I desperately wanted to keep because it was not all that readily available for purchase.

In view of the events of 2012 in the Middle East and North Africa, the need for raising awareness and getting organized in an effort to change the spontaneous movements where many lives will be lost, into real Revolutions; the need for reading specific genre of progressive (& banned) books is an undeniable fact. Here are two starters:
The Little Black Fish
24 Hours Between Dream & Reality

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL.

Ralph wrote: "If you read the article, you'd see the answer to your question [on why libraries don't just sell their books].

"The problem is the situation for a library is more complicated than when you just take a bunch of old clothes and unwanted porn down to the Salvation Army. A library book is stamped and bugged and cataloged so that the library knows that it belongs to them. When a book is given away or sold, the library has to go through and remove all that crap, so whoever winds up with it can prove they didn't just steal it off the shelf. " "

I realize that this is a very late reply to this thread and I don't have the time or energy to read all posts to see if this is mentioned elsewhere, but it's wrong to say that libraries must spend time removing their paraphernalia from their books before sale. I recently got a book through an online swap which still looked entirely like a library book except for a stamped "WITHDRAWN" on the inside. I actually emailed the library it originally belonged to because our local library goes through the book with the marker to remove their marks. Their staff told me that they don't spend time (and therefore money) when readying their books for sale in their shop.

I'm inclined to agree with the commenters who question the validity of this author. I can see Borders burning their excess stock rather than donating it, but not libraries, or at least, not the vast majority of libraries as Cracked seems to imply. I need more evidence than this one person's word.

Yeah there was this guy at work who as he was reading paperback books would rip out he pages and throw them away. He did it to make it easier to fit in his pocket and carry it around. I was horrified! After you are done reading a book, keep it or give it a new home!

I have several antique books in my own collection dating back to the 30's-50's that were at one time library books, some even old books from school libraries. I'm another one that finds the prospect of burning or destruction of books horrifying.

Have any of you read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury? Not much of a sci-fi fan, but I think the book had a great meaning. Anyway, people are becoming less interested in books and to "equalize" the country, the "firemen" actually burn books. But instead of wiping out the books, people, and ideas, some people actually want to save these books, people, and ideas. Basically, the burning of these books only made some people's desire to read even greater. Burning books only gets rid of the actual tangible copies, but the ideas stay with you, and if you dedicate yourself enough, you can memorize pieces and pass them down generations. But burning books- still terrible.

Unfortunately with the glut of mass-market paperbacks, and people without room in their homes to keep all the books they read, there isn't any place to put them. As much as I abhor the concept, when the alternative is to put them in a landfill, I support recycling them. If I owned hardcopies of all the books I read, as opposed to e-books, I would half to have a library that took up half my 1000 sq foot house. The dogs already take up most of the remaining space. :) We need more space than that to live in.

So here is a book that nearly gave me a panic attack when I saw the cover (I'm a little OCD about my books) but is a way to repurpose old books:

The Repurposed Library



All the pictures on the cover are disturbing to me, like seeing little animal skeletons all over would be. Even the bottom left picture is upsetting because the books are asymmetrical and not in an artistic way. Perhaps I should seek help.

Nice!