#libraries – Mouth of the River

A day before The Townie posted my essay on weeding, the removal of old books from local libraries, the local daily ran a front-page story on the “success” of the Newburyport Public Library’s new volunteer program.

“New” because the volunteer program was suspended in the summer of 2023 by Mayor Sean Reardon. “New” because the new gig was crafted by the newly appointed Head Librarian Kevin Bourque. Also “new” because none of volunteers at the time are with the new crop. Considering that all of them were retirees, you could say that they, too, were weeded.

Nor could any of them rejoin the renewal. That would be awkward in light of the petition to the City Council that they and a few supporters, including me, signed calling for an investigation into the manner of their dismissal. The petition was successful, although the delay in choosing an investigator allowed a City Hall official who played a key role time to find a municipal position and new home in Western Massachusetts.

Coincidence? Maybe. But is it also coincidence that the local paper heralds nothing but success just as the investigation is drawing to a close in February? Here’s a sentence that appears midway in the 850-word report:

After collecting feedback from staff as well as former volunteers, Bourque crafted a new program and policy that was approved last May by the board of directors as well as library staff.

The phrase “from staff as well as volunteers” is no doubt true because he did listen to anyone who walked through his open door at times he set, including me. And a few of the dismissed vols told me that they have spoken to him. However, in the context of this all-lollipops report, those six words create a rainbow impression that they approve of all that has happened, and that all is forgiven and forgotten.

Another item in the report appears as a glaring contradiction to anyone who has followed the NPL saga, but would go unnoticed by casual readers. A reason for dismissal was that vols were doing staff work, a breach of the union contract.

That was then. Now, Bourque openly reveals that the new vols are doing nothing but reshelving books in the stacks. How is that task not among the various items in a librarian’s job description? Call it a clear case of “Which is it?”

But that’s a rhetorical question. Starting with Reardon’s suspension, this has been a shell game to disguise the removal of people well-acquainted with local history who actually knew how to research and could help patrons find things.

Reasons given for the dismissal begin with “bullying” and “harassment,” but no one who knows any of the elderly, professional, and highly competent dismissed vols believes that for a moment. Which may be why no incident or quote was ever specified despite numerous requests for them over these past 18 months.

My own speculation is that many young people expect a raise of inflection and or a giggle at the end of every spoken sentence, as well as smiley face or heart or huggy emojis after written ones. Normal talk, people my post-menopausal age often find, sounds angry to them. A matter-of-fact question is not heard but felt as assault and battery.

To nail down a breach of the union contract, charges against the dismissed vols included money. We were told in the daily paper that they took money from patrons. In the most extreme case of a public institution “airing dirty laundry” that I’ve ever seen, the NPL website posted it prominently for five weeks. The intended impression was to make the dismissed vols appear to be exploiting their role. The truth is that some patrons gave them coins for the photocopier because the vols were familiar with machines those patrons had never used.

So much for the veracity of NPL staff. Added to all of that, Bourque’s recent, unwitting admission regarding shelving seems like old news.

What’s new is the claim, or at least the impression, that the dismissed vols had a say in Bourque’s redesigned volunteer program. It should not take John Kerry to come here and tell us of the consequence of not answering false claims. And some of us still wonder if Kamala Harris missed the Swiftboat by never answering the repeated charge that she advocated sex-change operations for penitentiary inmates.

Don’t mean to tax your patience with yet another critique of a public library, but false information and insinuations that go unanswered stick. For that I reason, I write this not out of choice, but of obligation.

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Photo from *The Townie*, an on-line “public square for the passionate voices of Greater Newburyport.” Here’s a link to another *Townie* essay critical of NPL–this one about the “cultural homogenization and the sidelining of local knowledge” since Reardon’s banishment of the Archival Center’s volunteers.
https://www.townienbpt.com/education/2024/11/12/the-newburyport-public-library-can-do-more-to-promote-our-communitys-diverse-past

Call me Herman.

While sitting on Plum Island overlooking the marsh reading Melville’s early novels, it’s easy to imagine I’m on a lush tour of the South Pacific.

A headset offering “virtual reality”? I would prefer not to.

In semi-retirement and with an insistent preference for hardcover, I’d go broke buying Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, and White Jacket—not to mention tired and blind trying to find them in bookstores.

Among many other things—civic archives and events, children’s reading programs, on-line resources and the computers to access them, not to mention technical assistance for all of the above—this is what libraries are for.

So, off to the Newburyport Public Library I went searching for Omoo (Tahitian for “rover”). Not there. The Modern Library of America’s four Melville compilations I had borrowed in the past? All gone. In fact, all I found was a single copy of Moby-Dick.

The on-line catalogue for the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium listed just one Omoo, and so I had it sent from Methuen. Next day, I spotted a friend from out-of-town who works at a library upriver photographing City Hall’s Juneteenth celebration and inquired.

He told me it’s called “weeding.” With so much on-line, many books never circulate. And then there’s MVLC.

“So, one Omoo is enough for over 30 city and town libraries?” I asked. He shrugged, I shrugged, and the mayor began to speak. That night, I sent him a message asking if weeding was a secret.

Here’s something that’s not a secret: Public libraries are as high as public education, public transportation, public everything on the Republican Party’s hit list. Are librarians now doing their dirty work for them?

While mulling that over, I received this:

It’s no secret. All libraries weed. If a book doesn’t circulate over a period of time, it’s removed. If the book is worn, meaning well read, we purchase another copy, if still in print.

Some are replaced by new trendy volumes on the same subject. You may not be able to get contemporary accounts of historical events, he cracked, but you can always get some “name-the time-or-place History for Dummies.”

If another MVLC library has the same title, removal is to avoid duplication, unless it’s a hot title:

“You can see it for yourself. Just walk through the literature and poetry sections.”

I did. As he says, “pretty anemic.” The Reference section looks empty. A bookcase on the 3rd floor with coffee table books—atlases, photography, fashion, art, etc.—is now gone, “so too the oversized books because they didn’t circulate.”

His voice rose in print:

Of course not! Too big to take home. But I witnessed many patrons read/browse/enjoy them in our library. Most people can’t afford to buy those books. The library can.

I saw many parents with children looking at atlases and photography books together and teens sharing books. We’re weeding not just books, we’re weeding people.

Given the overall demise of print, I asked, shouldn’t public libraries be increasingly vigilant safeguarding books?

Ha! A story from your own library circulated throughout MVLC that a patron wanted a second look at the two volumes of The Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier. Perhaps that patron delighted to think someone else had them, but when unable to place a hold, he inquired.

Weeded.

No matter that Whittier has deep Newburyport connections and that the books, published by a relative in 1894, contain his letters, always of deep local, historical value.

How are empty spaces on shelves better than those books? Than any books? This is not the product of careful thought, but of “policy and procedure,” the very antithesis of thought that turns thinking people into badly programmed robots. At a library no less.

Oh, the irony! Just 21 years ago NPL expanded to the tune of $6.8 million for what? More books, they said back then. Maybe they think Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, and John Quincy Adams are coming back through their door and they need bunk beds.

From my first inquiry, my librarian friend and I kept using a phrase: “with so much on-line.” Yet more irony! This dialogue began at a celebration of an American historical event as overlooked—perhaps as weeded—as Omoo all these years.

What’s on-line? I would prefer we start thinking of what’s on the line.

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Tag: #libraries

Lollipops & Rainbows

Why Weed What We Read?