Are You a Librarian in a Public or School Library? Or Do You Know One Who Might Be Willing to Talk with Me?

I'm writing up a longish blog post about some controversies related to the "weeding" of books in public libraries and in public school libraries—which is to say, removal of books from library collections—and I'd love to talk to librarians who actually have some experience with this process.

I've reviewed Rebecca Vnuk's The Weeding Handbook and various online resources, such as CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries. and the California Department of Education's Weeding the School Library: The Counterpart to Selection. I've also reached out to the American Library Association and some other groups that have expressed views on the subject.

But I'd also like to talk to people who actually do weeding themselves, or have seen it done, and ask them some questions about the process. If you or a friend of yours would be willing to chat by Zoom, phone, or e-mail, please e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu.

Also, if you have some comments about how the weeding process actually operates—based on your personal knowledge or reliable second-hand knowledge—or recommendations for other publications I can review or groups I can ask, please post them in the comments. But please focus on such information, rather than debating what the process ought to be or criticizing particular kinds of weeding decisions or policies. You'll have plenty of opportunity to debate these matters when I put up my post, likely within the next week or two. At this point, I'm just trying to gather information that will help make my post as accurate, informative, and balanced as possible. Thanks!

Comments

[SimonP]

Anyone considering taking Eugene up on this offer should do so with an awareness that he is likely to disregard any input that detracts from his desired legal conclusion.

That legal conclusion will likely be along the lines of "weeding out books from public school libraries is necessarily content-based, so the First Amendment can't be said to place any restrictions on that practice, particularly when Republican state governments like Texas (whose "free speech"-restricting practices I have repeatedly endorsed) seek to weed out viewpoints and subjects they dislike."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Anyone considering responding to this invitation should be informed that Prof. Volokh would be expected to applaud, promote, and protect Republicans and right-wingers (especially bigots) while criticizing (perhaps misleadingly) and exposing liberals, libertarians, and members of the modern mainstream.

[Mr. Bumble]

Facts not in evidence from the douche in residence.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You haven't noticed that Prof. Volokh's position on pseudonymity wavers with the partisan winds? He is regularly and resolutely opposed to pseudonymity -- except when the person seeking pseudonymity is a old-timey right-winger, in which circumstance he dons flip-flops and becomes an ardent advocate for pseudonymity.

What makes you think he would treat librarians any differently?

[Joe_dallas]

SimonP 2 hours ago
Flag Comment Mute User
Anyone considering taking Eugene up on this offer should do so with an awareness that he is likely to disregard any input that detracts from his desired legal conclusion."

Disparaging the person without basis - oh so common

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The legal analysis at the Volokh Conspiracy is result-driven.

The censorship at the Volokh Conspiracy is viewpoint-driven.

[SimonP]

I have sufficient basis.

Eugene has written previously on how the First Amendment applies to curatorial decisions in the public school library context. He has dismissed prior (weak) case law on the point and believes that public school libraries should be treated the same way that public school curricula are, for First Amendment purposes. Specifically, that means that school districts are generally free to declare topics out of bounds and "weed" their libraries without constitutional constraint.

Much of the force of his argument turns on the inability to clearly define a standard that would permit ordinary-course curation of public school libraries while prohibiting some harder-to-define kinds of decisions about library content. One of the critiques of this argument - and, indeed, it is one that I personally have made repeatedly - is that it is not very informed by what librarians actually do, or by the field that has dedicated so much thought to this very kind of question.

Evidently he is now seeking to inform himself. But I have seen enough of his writing on other topics to be fairly confident that nothing he's deigned to learn as part of this process is likely to shift his views. It will simply enable him to write a more "scholarly" version of his pre-existing argument that will stand up to the obvious objection I've levied at him, once published.

[Davy C]

So...

It will simply enable him to write a more “scholarly” version of his pre-existing argument that will stand up to the obvious objection I’ve levied at him, once published.

If the argument stands up to your objection, what's the problem? Does your argument only work if people are ignorant?

[SimonP]

If you ignore most of my comment to take a shot at a single sentence, taken out of context - what reason do I have to respond to you thoughtfully?

[Bwaaah]

Look at SimonP. EASILY able to look WAY down his SNOOTY nose to SMELL the MALICE of who?

EUGENE VOLOKH, my friends. EUGENE VOLOKH!!!

I didn't realize until now how very small you are. (I hadn't been watching for long.)

[SimonP]

Your wife didn't think I was small.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How many racial slurs would someone need to publish in a year to create at least a suspicion concerning malice in your judgment, Bwaaah?

Prof. Volokh and the Volokh Conspiracy ask you to consider quite carefully before responding.

[The Drill SGT]

EV,

Might I suggest you will get more interest if you add assurances about protecting your sources and locations?

[Eugene Volokh]

Thanks; I didn't think it was necessary to mention this in the main post, because I don't want this to look like a seeking-the-whistleblower situation -- I just want to know what's happening, and much of it will likely be entirely in keeping with stated policies. But, yes, if someone wants to talk confidentially, I'd be glad to do so.

[David Nieporent]

But please focus on such information, rather than debating what the process ought to be or criticizing particular kinds of weeding decisions or policies.

Apparently Prof. Volokh is new to the Internet.

[Armchair]

Actual librarians will have actual experience in weeding. That's what's being looked for.

[David Nieporent]

Yes, I can read. My point was (as is perfectly illustrated by this comment thread) hoping that people give useful responses rather than jumping on their own hobby horses is naive in the extreme. SimonP immediately started not by responding to EV, but by trying to discourage others from doing so and trying to predict what's going to happen so that he could pat himself on the back later, Blackmanlike, if it happens.

[SimonP]

I think anyone passing by this invitation to participate needs fair warning of Eugene's growing habit of bad faith.

If it's any consolation, I have made predictions about Eugene that have not borne out. I haven't made a show of my seeing and acknowledging this, but I've privately recognized that Eugene can still surprise me sometimes in this respect.

I fully hope that to happen here. I would prefer that a man with as high a profile as Eugene come around to adjust some of his views and become again the champion of free speech he once was, rather than to be vindicated in accurately predicting on a message board that he's increasingly blinkered.

[Life of Brian]

I would prefer that a man with as high a profile as Eugene come around to adjust some of his views and become again the champion of free speech he once was

The pragmatist might observe that his attitude toward free speech has left untouched the subversive and utterly off-topic spew with which you’ve chosen to litter this discussion after a specific and polite request not to do so.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Prof. Volokh has repeatedly censored comments and banned at least one commenter for making fun of conservatives and/or criticizing conservatives. He acknowledged it, said he would do it again, and expressly ascribed his censorship to "civility standards."

Meanwhile, Prof. Volokh publishes racial slurs regularly and this blog never censors comments (from conservatives) that call for liberals to be gassed, exterminated, placed face-down in landfills, shot in the face when opening doors, raped, sent through Zyklon showers, etc.

The record contains thousands of Volokh Conspiracy comments (from conservatives) using racial slurs, homophobic slurs, antisemitic slurs, misogynistic slurs, Islamophobic slurs, transphobic slurs, xenophobic slurs, etc. that Prof. Volokh has permitted to stand uncensored for years.

Free speech and principles, clinger-style.

#Right-WingCensorship
#ConservativePartisanship
#Hypocrisy

[Life of Brian]

And speaking of off-topic spew, every last bit of your tiresome yelping about censorship rather ironically stays up as well.

[SimonP]

I'd suppose that Eugene's decision to leave my comments untouched has less to do with maintaining a "free speech" environment than it would be the hassle of deleting my comments, deleting my comments that ask him why he's deleting my comments, banning my account when I continue to leave comments complaining about the deletions, then deleting and banning a sock that I set up to leave further comments, and then ultimately IP-banning me, until I take the further step of spoofing my IP, etc., etc., etc.

But who knows? Perhaps he likes the rough and tumble of maintaining a site with a lively and often off-topic comment section, where no one feels obliged to effect obsequity or pusillanimity towards one another or the site's main contributors.

[Life of Brian]

So you're just too much of a petulant, whiny bitch to ban? I guess that's a theory.

[SimonP]

I would summarize it more as "Eugene doesn't want to get caught up in the business of filtering through comments for trolls, for various reasons," but your characterization works just as well.

Keep in mind that a laissez-faire mentality that permits my comments to remain also protects the bulk of yours and many other regular commenters. I doubt that Eugene has much respect for most of the comments his posts receive, notwithstanding the ways in which he seems to intentionally rile them up.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I think the first summation is accurate.

As you might not know, this blog used to be fairly heavily moderated, and the discussions were much better. Substantive comments were rarely deleted, but obnoxious and insulting comments were.

Most people took the hint and cleaned up their act, but we got the occasional dipshit who would continuously spam the comments after being asked not to comment. It was never as good a look as the comment thought it would be. They always came across as a spurned lover.

I suspect that the practice became too much of a hassle for the bloggers, though.

[M L]

Lmao. He's also peculiarly obsessed with public schools putting pornographic materials into the hands of children. A strange preoccupation indeed. Hasn't procreated himself no doubt.

[Armchair]

Even if it's a small minority of comments (or really private e-mails), that's what's being looked for. Makes sense to ask specifically for what's being looked for. And some have responded as such.

[Pooneil]

This is a very interesting topic. Libraries have a necessary duty to have books that are appropriate to an audience. This is a curation process. People complaining about "banned" books often won't comment on what makes some curation OK and not removals.

Many seem to think it shouldn't be political but are unable to formulate a way to curate libraries that isn't accountable in some way to elected officials. The various legal aspect of from the libertarian perspective this should add to the discussion.

[Joe_dallas]

Pooneil - I concur with your comments regarding curation that is appropriate for the audience. A book on two daddies or two mommies is okay for high school but inappropriate for elementary school.

back when my daughter was in 3rd grade, I got a call from the school librarian asking if it was okay if she checked out "to Kill a mockingbird" . My response was that I didnt know why she wanted to check it out since she read it last year.

[Lee Moore]

It’s hardly unusual for people, even small people, to reread books they’ve previously enjoyed.

[Nige]

‘A book on two daddies or two mommies is okay for high school but inappropriate for elementary school.’

There is absolutely no basis whatsoever for this arbitrary piece of discrimination other than bigotry.

[Nige]

That's the job of librarians, not small well-funded groups of religious cranks.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

It's everyone's job, including parents, not just self-selected elite guardians of morals.

[Stephen Lathrop]

You think school librarians (and their supervisors, and the faculty library clients they coordinate with) are self-selected?

[Pooneil]

It is the job of elected officials to set the policy for municipal and school libraries and the librarians to implement it.

[EscherEnigma]

I mean, the discussion becomes a lot easier when it's the state legislature suddenly applying pressure to exclude books on certain topics, and doing so outside of the normal process all-together.

Really removes the nuance.

[throwawayjones]

In my experience, the process varies based on the type of library (public, academic, special) and size of the collection. I currently work at a small location with a lot of traffic and high checkout rates. So when we weed, we look at foundational things like condition (physical damage, wear, stains) or obsolescence (like a book on computer programming published in 1997). But, because we have such minimal space, we also consider usage/demand (if it hasn't gone out in a year, it's in danger) and sufficient coverage of a particular topic. When Trump was President, we had five shelves of books about Trump, both the "he's destroying America" kind and the "he's saving America" kind. Since he's out of office, the demand for Trump books has faded a lot, so we've reduced the number of items in that section to a solid core of well-written titles. Same reason we used to have 15 copies of Girl, Wash Your Face, or Where the Crawdads Sing, and now have maybe 1 or 2.

At my current library, we use software to periodically generate lists of titles based on criteria like usage or overrepresentation of a particular subject. Then the person responsible for weeding pulls those titles to evaluate whether they should be removed from the collection. We consider whether we can get the title from another library if someone does request it (most library systems will share their items with other systems) or if it's something of particular meaning for our library, like a book by a local author. Otherwise, we use the criteria I mentioned to make a decision about keeping vs. weeding.

[Eugene Volokh]

Very helpful, thanks!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ever consider storage? For example, if Trump is either re-elected or goes to jail (or both -- as James Michael Curley did) it would be a pain to have to buy all those books again...

[Armchair]

I mean....There's limited storage. And storage isn't just limited to actual storage costs, but also the costs of inventory, keeping up to date inventories, etc...

If you're talking about something that would be difficult to re-acquire, then perhaps. But for 95% of items, it's easier to discard then reobtain in the rare case it's needed.

[John F. Carr]

If anything exciting happens to Trump there will be a new batch of books to buy.

Academic libraries put books into storage. I remember seeing the culling team take a cart full of journals to an elevator on the way to storage and thinking, "nobody will ever see those journals alive again". Books have a better if still small chance of being recalled.

Small libraries don't have the resources to manage an archival collection.

How does ownership and collection status work for ebooks? All those Trump titles still exist in digital form somewhere.

[Armchair]

Sounds about right. High checkout rate items are going to be kept. Items that haven't been checked out in a year are in danger. Physical condition is always an issue as is obsolescence.

Where it gets "interesting" is in categories where books are dropped down to one or two for a given topic, but the topic "has" to be covered. If you're keeping a biography of Reagan, do you keep the one where he's the second coming of Conservative Jesus, or the one where he's the proverbial devil in a suit.

[Lee Moore]

I should have thought weeding on the basis that it’s about Reagan, whatever view it takes of him, is going to be “not content neutral.”

Some of the weeding criteria that have been mentioned are content neutral though - physical condition and usage for example. Which of course would tend to cut across each other.

Seems odd though to focus on weeding without bothering about planting, though I suppose from a 1A point of view they’re different acts.

[Armchair]

Again, it's going to be the items that are rarely checked out, that nevertheless the library really should have a copy of that's going to be of importance. Let's give an example

1. The Bible. I can't imagine a library not having a copy of this somewhere, as one of the most printed items in history. Simultaneously, part of me can't imagine checking it out either.

[Longtobefree]

May I put forth a conspiracy theory that 'weeding' is a dog whistle for cultivating the devil weed marihuana?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I once got into a very interesting library fight, basically telling my (female) colleagues that what passed for the high school library sucked because it (a) had less than 100 books and (b) not a one of them was something a boy would want to read.

I'll email you the details.

[David Nieporent]

I think it's more likely that "100" is just the biggest number Dr. Ed knows, kind of like when Dr. Evil demanded 1 million dollars.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Gosh. What a useful comment.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, defend the honor of Dr. Ed from being dragged for yet another personal story.

My favorite part was that is colleague was female. What a vital detail!

Do you want some kind of perfect memoryless system, where past comments of a poster are not taken into account?

[PFSchaffner]

I'm a university and community-college librarian, not quite what you want; but my wife retired a year ago as the head children's librarian of a suburban public library. I will ask her. I do know that weeding is probably the subject that raises most ire *between* librarians (and between libraries). Rarely, if ever is it done in a wholly objective manner, if that were even possible.

[EscherEnigma]

Volokh knows full well that the recent book-banning attempts have nothing to do with the normal weeding process, but has hidden behind that transparent skirt for two years now.

That, after hiding behind it so long, he's only now considering looking at what he's hiding behind? Well, it's very telling.

All of which is to say... there's no reason anyone should think Volokh is asking in good faith, or will use what he learns in good faith.

[PFSchaffner]

Based on my experience, I'd say first that weeding and acquisition must be considered in tandem, especially since many libraries, where space is limited, operate on the basis of having to discard a book for every book purchased. Weeding tends to be done section by section and tends to be more sensitive and secretive, since the public are apt to complain if they see books thrown away. Public challenges to acquisition are fairly rare, but do exercise some small restraint on selection and retention -- of a character that depends on what sort of complainers are locally predominant. Legal challenges are virtually unknown. The biases of individual library directors are more,influential (one, a Catholic, might allow the selection of books from a Ignatius; another, an atheist, might eschew sectarian publications, and get rid of all such books at first opportunity). Peer pressure is influential: both selection and retention/weeding are often based in part on lists of what similar institutions own or 'must' own. Popularity and usage are very influential but cut both ways: a book checked out a lot is both more likely to be retained, and more likely to wear out and be weeded (also more likely to be stolen). Most influential of all are systemic factors. Selection is governed heavily by gatekeepers, especially review journals such as School Library Journal, Choice, Hornbook, and Booklist, all of which these days skew heavily toward progressive values. Lists of recommended books by authorities (awards committees, etc., which also almost all skew heavily toward progressive orthodoxy) and even availability by book jobbers such as Baker & Taylor, also serve as gatekeepers. And of course publishers themselves determine what is published, with their own biases, especially important since libraries tend to limit their purchases to a few 'respectable' (mainstream) publishers and avoid independents or religious houses.