Proponents of book destruction warn against the mentality that sees the library's function as a "museum of the book." Their point is that while you may think of the library as shelf after shelf of beloved old works of literature, the most important function (and often biggest cost) of a library is maintaining active subscriptions to dozens or hundreds of journals that students and academics use for research - LibrarianOnTheLoose

"Nails it?" I dunno. Seems pretty fast-and-loose to me. - bevedog

I'd say Steve's being generous. An awful article, even at a supposed humor site. - Walt Crawford

Lately the articles i've been seeing from Cracked are more political/social commentary than humor and I can't figure out when they made the switch. I don't think the article "nails it" in terms of scholarly import or something like that. I think it is a good piece to get non libraryland types interested in and concerned with the role and future of libraries. - LibrarianOnTheLoose

I'd disagree, if only because (a) the author says books are dead, (b) the author treats libraries as vandals of civilization, wantonly destroying important stuff in secret. I'm not sure hostile caricatures much help the cause of libraries. - Walt Crawford

I guess I don't read it as hostile. I thought the author did try to show that libraries aren't being malevolent, but they are responding to patron demand and economic pressures. - LibrarianOnTheLoose

I think the key to understanding this article lies in one of its first sentences: "For the past year or so, part of my job has been to walk through library warehouses and destroy tens of thousands of often old and irreplaceable books." It's a lot easier to do that job, I bet, if you see it as something ALL libraries are doing, nay, being forced to do, than as one approach to the problem. Talking about how libraries (some libraries) go out of their way to take those alternative, more costly, withdrawal paths, or about how libraries (some libraries) choose to communicate openly with their patrons about what they are withdrawing and why, would make the painful parts of his own job a lot harder to justify, ennit? It's a cri de coeur. - Marianne