Interesting Story from Cal Poly Pomona’s library, where Bruce Emerton started an online petition calling for a moratorium on the disposal of books, and got a visit from the cops. Emerton, a longtime Cal Poly librarian, launched the online petition called “Save Our Books” three weeks ago at www.calpolylibrary.com because he was upset about what he says are the dumping of books. He is calling for a halt to the disposal of books, journals and other printed materials and an independent audit of all items that have been discarded.
“We’ve gone beyond weeding. We’re dumping,” Emerton said.
he should know better
What an asshole. People like that are giant pains in the ass with they are patrons or the inevitable communtiy-at-large-crank that libraries attract.
But he’s a librarian. What the hell? Have you ever met one of our people who just run around yanking stuff off the shelves randomly and shouting “WHEE!”
He knows this has to happen. He is a very bad professional if he can’t see weeding as nearly as important to his job as buying the books.
“Books deserve respect?” Sorry, dude. Words deserve respect. Ideas deserve respect. Books are a mode of transportation. They don’t have little book souls that suffer when you throw them away.
The expansion seems to be what’s needed. He’s rotten at his job if he puts his book fetish above his patrons and his university.
Wanker.
another casualty
His site is gone. Weeded, apparently.
Appropriate response
Taser the kid with the postcards.
Other options…
I think this guys is dumb too, and I laughed a little bit too loud at the taser the student comment.
The library might want to look at another method of disposal, like Better World Books or bLogistics (unless they already are using something like this). We feel a lot less guilty about discarding books when we can send then on to someone else. Then again, even with using a service like this we end up throwing some in the trash, because they don’t meet the requirements of what the service will take. I don’t feel guilty about that, because weeding is just a fact of library life!
Re:Other options…
I meant “guy”.