[mod note] Part of the reason why I do what I do is because the importance of this type of information becoming a part of popular culture and consciousness isn’t theoretical to its survival-it’s essential.
In other words, if we’re not talking about it, it can cease to exist for not just you, but other people. Some databases are set up in such a way that “unpopular” material is culled automatically.
I won’t let this information die.
This is true for people of all marginalizations, in all types of informational and educational curation. How can we prevent a system designed to cull the disenfranchised from our own pages from doing so? How can we make these marginalized histories and non-dominant narratives survive?
These are the questions I’m asking myself as we enter into an increasingly hostile world this year.
An important thing to understand here is that public libraries remove materials based on circulation all the time.There is a finite amount of space on the shelves, new books coming out every year, and in most jurisdictions, declining budgets. The end result is that shit gets removed from the collection. The term for this is not “culling”, it is weeding. If a book has been on the shelf for the past three years without anyone taking it out, it is exceedingly hard to justify keeping it – a public library does want to educate people, but they’re not a university library.
The actual problem with the program being discussed is not that it is removing books based on popularity, it is that it is removing the capacity for library staff to say “… but it’s important we have this book for other reasons.” At the last library I worked at, we had a “section” of books on Mi'kmaq history that was kept in a storage closet in the staff-only part of the building. This was because they circulated poorly and some of them were quite old, and so there had been pressure to get rid of them so that the section of shelf that they used to occupy could be filled with something that would be read more. My boss’s boss thought this was unacceptable, though – that it was important that these books stayed accessible to the public. So as a sort of compromise, they wound up in the back, on a shelf in this closet. Functionally a closed stack – people could still get them by request.
I mean, like, there is nothing wrong with what you’re actually saying, and I’m not here disagreeing with you, and my anecdote hardly conflicts with your take. Automatic weeding without a compassionate human able to veto it at some point is a bad idea. But the library industry is a thing that people outside of it tend not to actually understand in any meaningful way unless they’re inside of it, and whenever a story like this comes out, the conversation always turns to the idea that weeding books is bad in of itself, without the context of what is normal or best practice or even necessary for the library to function.
Like, my god,“culling.” For fuck’s sake.
When librarians are moved to create fake patrons, complete with licenses and birthdates, in order to save books; when this leads to a suspended branch supervisor and various other disciplinary actions, yes, the right term to use is “Automated Culling”.
At the last library I worked at, we had a “section” of books on Mi'kmaq
history that was kept in a storage closet in the staff-only part of the
building. This was because they circulated poorly and some of them were
quite old, and so there had been pressure to get rid of them so that the
section of shelf that they used to occupy could be filled with
something that would be read more. My boss’s boss thought this was
unacceptable, though – that it was important that these books stayed
accessible to the public. So as a sort of compromise, they wound up in
the back, on a shelf in this closet. Functionally a closed stack –
people could still get them by request.
Non-white, non-Western History, relegated to a shelf in a staff-only closet.
Native American History, on a shelf, in a staff-only closet.
This is what I am talking about when I say MARGINALIZED. HISTORIES. It’s not just an idea, it’s not “Theory”.
It is physically removing books from shelved labeled “History”, and put into a back closet where patrons can only find them if they
1. already know they are there
2. know that they can ask for them
3. are ABLE to ask for them
4. the employee who is asked for them knows what they are and that they are there.
This is literally institutional pressure to remove history books from the shelf, because even ON THE SHELF people often don’t know they’re there, they don’t know what to look for, how to ask, or are unable to do so because the library might not be accessible, or they may be unable to be physically present, or know how to ask for them.
Another reason that this is not only “Theory”: Do you have any idea how much i had to pay, in US American dollars, for the privilege of being taught the history of my own people by a white man?
for an ELECTIVE credit???
Do you have any clue how much I am committed to trying to prevent that from being the case for other marginalized people? As many as I can manage?
The history of my people and of other marginalized peoples is not a “weed”. It is not some embarrassing side effect of other, “more important” people’s history. It belongs in the hands of our peoples, not on a shelf in a literal “staff-only” closet.
