When I was Young I Loved School: Dropping Out and Hanging In
By Children’s Express
Edited by Sheffield and Frankel
1988
Submitter: What is this book, even?! Just a compendium of conversations between teenage editors of Children’s Express and randomly selected teens about dropping out. Even in 1988, did “eavesdropping” on kids’ conversations tell us much about why kids drop out? And did teens in 1988 talk in complete sentences with proper grammar and punctuation, as rendered here?
Footy fan
Vol 1, No. 2 and Vol 1, No. 3
1963
Submitter: Footy Fan – no not that type of podiatric lover – is a magazine from down under for Australian Football. It was dropped off as a donation to this American local public library. This will be kicked over to the for sale cart where I am sure it will walk out the door.
Holly: These are cool, although I doubt most American public libraries have a collection need for them. Yeah – someone will snag them in a sale, though.
Easy-to-Make Puppets
Stockwell
1973
Submitter: Easy To Make Puppets allows you to make…
Holly: The disembodied head on the cover ought to give Mary sweet dreams. And if that doesn’t do it, the double-whammy clown puppet in the last image below will for sure. (You’re welcome!)
Mary: It’s part of my trifecta of evil: puppets, clowns, and mimes. Make it STOP!
Digital libraries
Balasubramanian
2021
Submitter: I was excited to see this book at my local public library. I always like learning more about what other libraries are doing in the way of digital libraries. This book is a joke! Just take a look at the scanning section. Not to mention the pixelated HTML screenshots. Sad…
Holly: Apparently Ess Ess Publications is a publisher of library science materials in India. I don’t know where Submitter’s library is located, and I don’t know how useful this would be to libraries in India. I was surprised at the publication date, though, and those screen shots on the example pages (below) are impossible to read. Not your best choice on the subject here in the U.S.!
The Jewish Celebrity Hall of Fame
Boxer
1987
Submitter: This book and its humor is very old and it needs to go. Not sure a book today could keep up with the many Jewish celebrities that exist thanks to just social media alone.
Holly: Sure, but were they ever featured on stamps?
Making Your Garden Bush Friendly: How to Recognise and Control Garden Plants which Invade Sydney’s Bushland
McLoughlin
1993
Submitter: We are an academic library serving a landscape program. While right-sizing the collection this week, I found this unfortunate processing fail. For the record, the barcode is covering the word Garden.
Holly: (Snort!)
Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South
McKitrick (Ed.)
1963
Submitter: We are going through a massive weeding project at our small academic library, and this title came up (thankfully in the titles to be weeded!). Now, granted, I wasn’t alive in the 1960s, but I would have hoped a title like this would have been problematic even then. The judgment call in the title is completely unnecessary – the collection of essays could easily have been called Views of Slavery in the Old South and conveyed the same information. Now, however, the phrasing of the title is not merely problematic but downright offensive, particularly to our students and faculty of color. I’m glad we’re getting it out of the building! As for the content, someone actually wrote an epic-length poem called “The Hireling and the Slave”, which is excerpted (my mind is still blown that 11 pages is just an excerpt) in this volume. I scanned a sample.
Holly: It may have value to historical researchers, but the title is definitely pretty awful!
Social Psychology of Education
Guskin
1970
Submitter: The groovy 1970s cover caught my eye on the weeding cart! But the shabby condition and outdated content meant it had to go. See the index for Outdated Term for People of Color as well as Outdated Term for People with Intellectual Disabilities.
Holly: It’s definitely outdated! Such an odd cover, too. It breathes some life into a serious academic tome. But, the Guskins (unclear if they’re related) are well-respected scholars and the book was positively reviewed (50 years ago). It’s clearly time to weed it now for all but the most historically-centered collections.
