Awful Library Books: Our Site of the Month
By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2009
www.awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com
No site has made the cut here at SOTM based on sheer wretchedness. Until now. Awful Library Books, a self-described glimpse of the “dark underbelly of collection,” features the worst titles found on library shelves.
Submissions by the blog’s readers remain anonymous and offending institutions aren’t identified either, and for good reason. Would you admit that you offer patrons a manual for Windows 3.1? Never mind that the ubiquitous Microsoft program has been updated six times since. Or how about a volume on Rocket Power and Space Flight dated 1957?
Anne Frank’s diary is a must-have in every collection, but not when it’s a paperback so tattered it resembles lace.
All kidding and cleverly snarky entries aside, the site clearly underscores the necessity of good weeding. That suits Awful Library Books’ founders Holly Hibner and Mary Kelly, both librarians at Salem-South Lyon (MI) District Library, just fine.
“Hopefully, with all of us out there talking about weeding,” they state on the About page, “maybe this blog will die a nice, happy death from lack of material!” I, for one, hope that never happens.
