Awful Library Books

Travel Advice for the Ladies

December 12, 2022 Mary Kelly Spanning the Globe 10 comments

Traveling Alone
A Practical Guide for Business Women
North
1979

If you want an example of outdated advice this is the book. It is full of technology references and advice that would probably be unknown to anyone under the age of 40. Although safety in travel is an excellent topic, this one doesn’t even come close to today’s reality. This was before any rolling suitcases were popular, tighter airport security, not to mention the amount of technology changes since 1979. Some highlights of the advice:

Things to pack:

First aid kit
Manicure set
craft projects
8 track tapes or cassette tape player
Diaphragm
golf clubs
disco dress

Other advice includes strategies for avoiding sexual harassment, using a travel agent, getting hotel reservations, etc. I think this book was probably edgy and helpful in 1979 (edgy, because women could go out alone and travel by themselves!). This book probably was outdated by the late 1980s.

Mormon Meat

December 5, 2022 Holly You Ate What? 16 comments

Favorite Mormon Recipes
Meats Edition Including Seafoods and Poultry
2000 Favorite Recipes
Montgomery Second Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
1966

Submitter: While weeding the cookbook section, I spied this sad spiral bound book being held together with a prayer. There is one thing I hate about cookbooks and that is a lack of pictures. In the case of this book- there were about 4 black and white photos in total for all 380+ pages. Incidentally there were no secret Jello recipes from Joseph Smith.

Holly: The Frankfurter-Kraut Noodle Ring, pictured below, reminds me of a dish my Polish family makes called haluski. We don’t Jello mold it, though. Missed opportunity.

Robert Palmer Girls

December 4, 2022 Holly Looking Good One comment

Be Your Own Makeup Artist: Jerome Alexander’s Complete Makeup Workbook
Alexander
1983

Submitter: Not sure why this cover is giving me such Robert Palmer vibes… This was found languishing on the shelf and no wonder – time to replace this with some from this century.

Holly: They do look like Robert Palmer girls!!

Tape and Prayer

November 28, 2022 Holly Condition/Processing Fail 4 comments

Christy
Marshall LeSourd
1967

Submitter: While assisting a rural library with their weeding, we came across Christy. The solo librarian could not believe that it was still on the shelf. She was horrified. It was last checked out in 1995. This little library has done an excellent job of serving its citizens of 353. They use catalog cards and do everything manually, so it is hard to keep up! Someone must have thought that Christy could be brought back to life!

Holly: Poor Christy is being held together with about a pound of tape and a prayer – which is appropriate, since this book is popular with Christian homeschoolers in my community. My library’s copy has circulated 43 times since 2007 when our current copy was added, most recently one year ago today. It would even be worth buying a new copy if ours was in bad shape. Clearly it is not that popular in Submitter’s library, though, if they have a copy in this kind of condition that hasn’t gone out since 1995. I think they’re safe weeding it and letting it go. Different strokes for different folks! I am curious about the tape job, actually. You can no longer see any title from the spine and there’s no call number sticker either. Even the title on the cover is so faint you have to look closely to see what book it is. Maybe it would have circulated if anyone could tell what book it was while browsing.

Collection development - picture of books

Diversity Collection Development

November 24, 2022 Mary Kelly Practical Librarian 6 comments

Thanksgiving represents the start of the holiday season. I particularly like working post Thanksgiving due to the large number of college students that show up telling me that their family is driving them crazy. There is also a high probability of pumpkin pie in the break room. Thanksgiving also makes me think of holiday books, especially ones for the kids.

As we head into the holiday season, it is a good time to dig deep into your holiday book collection. Instead of looking to see that holidays are represented, take a minute to really evaluate the collection, especially the older titles. Our library has been making a a concerted effort to make sure we are inclusive and respectful of both religions and cultures. Particularly helpful for collection development of non-Christian religious holidays and celebrations is Diverse Bookfinder.

Be mindful of how non-Christians or indigenous people are represented in books. Thanksgiving holiday books can be quite problematic in native representation – not to mention factually inaccurate. If you want some examples, check out the category “Holiday collection” on our site for examples.

Although I don’t do kiddie collection development (adults are SOOOO much easier!) anymore, I thought I would share a few resources for both youth and adults. (Holly cobbled this together based on some workshops and recommendations.) Of course, this is only to scratch the surface and gives you a starting point. I am sure there are more resources out there and this is not to be considered a comprehensive list. If anyone has any to share, by all means say so in the comments!

I will also point out that we have some sample collection development policies if you are looking for language on DEI. I also want to point you to the ALA discussion on Diversity in Collections.

From the Beginning

November 15, 2022 Holly But it's Historical! 17 comments

The Atlas of World History: From the Beginning to Alexander the Great
McEvedy
1970

Submitter: Weeding my high school library, where the non fiction books average an age of 1986, I found this in the history section. I flipped through it and it seemed pretty decent for being published in 1970 and White American centric, but then I saw this map and read the text accompanying it. It seems pretty racist even for 1970s.

Holly: Ouch, 1986? You have your work cut out for you, Submitter. Good catch on this one.

Republican Cooking

November 7, 2022 Holly You Ate What? 10 comments

How to Eat Like a Republican: Or, Hold the Mayo, Muffy – I’m Feeling Miracle Whipped Tonight
Townsend
2014

Submitter: This book was just weeded at my public library. It was weeded for low checkouts and there’s a reason why. It’s trying too hard to be funny and the recipes don’t look good at all.

Holly: I bet if you replaced “Republican” with any other group of people, political or not, you’d get the same basic recipes submitted. It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek, and I bet there are libraries where this kind of thing circulates well. I agree that the recipes look kind of dumb. For me, that’s actually what makes it funny! Some of the reviews on GoodReads are pretty funny too.

Solve Your Decorating Problems

October 18, 2022 Mary Kelly Home and Garden 17 comments

How to solve your decorating problems
Bradford
1976

Barbara Taylor Bradford has shown up on our site for her nonfiction decorating books. (I am so glad she turned to fiction.) For the time, these were pretty decent books, although I just about die a thousand deaths with this example.

Depending on the library’s mission, I don’t think one has to keep everything simply because the author is “significant”. No doubt that Bradford is significant. Hanging on to older titles because the author is “important” is not enough of a reason to keep something clearly outdated. Larger or specialty libraries can do this, but for the average public library, this is probably outside the scope of the library mission. Always remember your core audience and mission.