Library Creates Fake Patron Records To Avoid Book-Purging (heraldnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Chuck Finley checked out 2,361 books from a Florida library in just nine months, increasing their total circulation by 3.9%. But he doesn't exist. "The fictional character was concocted by two employees at the library, complete with a false address and driver's license number," according to the Orlando Sentinel. The department overseeing the library acknowledges their general rule is "if something isn't circulated in one to two years, it's typically weeded out of circulation." So the fake patron scheme was concocted by a library assistant working with the library's branch supervisor, who "said he wanted to avoid having to later repurchase books purged from the shelf." But according to the newspaper the branch supervisor "said the same thing is being done at other libraries, too."

Comments

Its not a fictional name, just an alias

[Anonymous Coward]

His real name is Sam Axe.

Good for them

[willoughby]

Displaying initiative and ingenuity in order to work around idiotic managerial policies & decisions. Give 'em a raise!

Re:Good for them

[v1]

If they were just trying to bolster funding, one would expect that they would inflate checkout rates for more popular titles then so as not to draw suspicion. Despite there being other possible options for "ulterior motive", "looking for a fix to offset a stupid decision by upper management" (or what someone passionately believed was a bad decision) looks like the frontrunner.

The policy's primary reasoning/justification was probably "clearing shelf space to make room for new books", so ultimately the need for that will end up getting re-examined. That's the risk you take when going behind management's back. You have to be sure that when your actions finally get exposed (and they almost always DO), you not only need to be right, but you need to be show to be unambiguously right. (and sometimes that's not even enough - they're management after all, and just like you they're allowed to make mistakes occasionally) Sometimes managers have a caretaker above them that will shelter them from fallout due to ineptitude, so either it doesn't matter or they don't care if they're wrong.

So it's difficult to defend what may have been a very well-intentioned act without substantial evidence to show that it was justified or perhaps necessary. I just don't think we have enough evidence at this point. Maybe later.

Re:Good for them

[meerling]

You may be right, but librarians have a nearly genetic imperative to prevent the loss of any book, even if nobody has read it in centuries.
It's also a point of professional pride and the loss of books is at odds with their stated goals.
If you really want to see what it's like, hold a book burning in front of your local library.

Re:Good for them

[Dutch Gun]

By holding onto clearly unpopular titles (not one checkout in a year or two), they were ensuring that potentially newer and more popular titles had no space in their library. I'm not sure how anyone could believe this was in the best interest of the library.

I can only think of a few motivations. An arrogant: "We know what's best for you." or "Everything new is crap" attitude, or perhaps purging books simply means more work for the librarians, and so this seemed easier to them. I'm leaning towards the latter explanation, as a kid's book titled "Why Do My Ears Pop?" doesn't exactly seem like high literature worth preserving for all time.

George Dore, the library’s branch supervisor who was put on administrative leave for his part in the episode, said he wanted to avoid having to later repurchase books purged from the shelf. He said the same thing is being done at other libraries, too.

And this makes no sense. If the books were not being checked out for years at a time, why would they have to later re-purchase the book?

Re:Good for them

[Dutch Gun]

The article does point out a bit later that this particular library didn't participate in that program, so it appear that there wasn't a financial motivation. This was mentioned, as it may be a motivation for OTHER libraries doing the same thing.

Re:Good for them

[Dutch Gun]

Ah, of course! It's clearly a plot by the DNC to promote their "fake books." I have a suspicion of what deviltry we'd find in that innocent-sounding "Why Do My Ears Pop?" book:

Susie: "Hey Mom, why do my ears pop?"

Mom: "Because Republicans are bad and want to hurt you. What you're feeling is the concentrated evil of failed Republic policies leftover from the Reagan era."

Susie: *cries*

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

In my town, all but one of the Librarians attend the same church. Every single book related to the Occult, Mysticism, magic, etc. is checked out... to a member of the same Church. The books get checked out once, then slowly accrue late fees for a year or two, until they finally equal the purchase price of the book. Then they get reported as "lost" and the Curch member pays for the copy.
Then the book is usually not reordered because it was only checked out once and thus has a low circulation score.

They do it as a way to censor material their Church finds objectional. There's a few things which will always get restocked regardless, but they are willing to pay a few bucks a year to keep people from being able to get it. And they also have a small cleaning supply closet stacked full of books which are listed as "on the shelf" but can never actually be found.

Re:Good for them

[lucm]

The policy's primary reasoning/justification was probably "clearing shelf space to make room for new books"

Yes get rid of that Steinbeck crap so there's more room for extra copies of "The Secret" and "Fifty shades of Grey". It's called the Blockbuster Syndrome.

Re:Good for them

[Locke2005]

"They have control of the public schools"??? You know most schoolbooks are the ones approved in that bastion of liberal thought know as Texas, right?

Re:Good for them

[MightyMartian]

By "left wing distortion" you mean science books that discuss evolution and a 4.5 billion years old earth as facts.

Re:Why purge?

[Burdell]

Most likely due to limited space. Libraries aren't infinite, so every new book has to displace an old one.

Re:Why purge?

[Darinbob]

But this process means they keep new mass market fluff, and not old out of print books.

Why you should support these actions

[SuperKendall]

Read this horrific story from UC Santa Cruz about 80k books being destroyed or sent elsewhere, it sounds like most from the science library...

What the purge rules overlook, and this article points out is that a lot of reference books are never checked out - they are looked at, something gleaned from the contents, and then put back where they were without a librarian being involved. As a result some books people did use from year to year are purged. And in this story at least you can't even get a list of what they threw out, because it was "lost"...

So do whatever you have to do noble librarians to fight the power and the Purge.

Re:Why you should support these actions

[AthanasiusKircher]

The most horrifying aspect of your linked story:

No chance was given to students or faculty to buy the books. Millions of dollars of public property was destroyed. A long-standing and painstakingly collected archive was removed to solve a temporary space problem.

This sounds like something they wanted to keep quiet because they expected pushback. I've been at many university library booksales over the years where they sell off stuff they want to purge. The library makes a little money, and happy patrons take books home for cheap.

I still recall with fondness the annual booksale at my local public library when I was a kid. Some of it was purged books from the library, and a lot more were just random donations from the town. For most of the sale, prices were low (maybe $1 for a hardback, $.50 for a paperback), but then for the last hour or two on the last day they'd do $1/bag. You could get a large paper grocery bag full of books for a $1. I must have gone there for 6 or 7 years and walked away with multiple bags of books... stuff that was mostly obscure non-fiction that I'd never think of looking for (and which was mostly too obscure for the small local library to stock). Sure, I myself would purge a lot of those books within a year or two of purchase too, but I still own some of those books today... including some that contain info that's still hard to find on the internet.

It's unfathomable that a major university library would simply throw away so many books without even offering them to someone. To me, the only reasonable explanation is that the administrators who made the decision wanted to do it "quietly," because I'm sure the librarians wouldn't just want tens of thousands of books destroyed without at least offering them to faculty or students.

Re:Why purge?

[SNRatio]

A branch library justifies its expenditure of public funding by being useful to it's community. To a first approximation, If more people check out new mass market fluff than old mass market fluff then recycling older titles is useful. Branch libraries are just that: branches. Almost all have access to state or regional interlibrary loan for rare titles. If the goal is to have older titles onsite so that people browsing will come across them: shuffling the rarer books between branch libraries every so often would be better than trying to have a "complete" collection at each site. Regular users of the library would have new-to-them titles to browse every few months.