The More Things Change . . .

A common refrain from those commenting on the current pandemic pestilence is that society will never really return to “normal.” For example, cautious and prudent citizens will be slow to resume their former patterns of restaurant patronage, if ever. Theaters, concerts, indeed ANY public gatherings will be shunned by many for a long time to come, and the change in the behavior of citizens will be noted and lamented.

However, Information Scientists can rejoice! Following up on their two-decade anti-book marketing strategy, libraries will finally be able to dump the final books from their physical collections because no one will be watching! "We deliver our content digitally," say the proud biblioposers, and the boast is true. To interact with a library is no longer a matter of visiting the place, and likely the vast majority of former patrons will avail themselves of socially-distant visitation via the internet. Meanwhile the codex massacre can quietly continue within the abandoned buildings. As they say, "While the cat's away..."

Should you venture out from your quarantine isolation you might wish to drive by the rubbish dumpster behind your local academic library and take a last look at what used to be their collection.

Why Do You Hate The Book So, My Brother?

If you had asked a librarian why he or she had chosen their profession as recently as thirty years ago, the answer would have certainly involved the respondent’s love of books. After all, why choose a profession dedicated to the custodial care of codex conglomerations if you are only interested in other things?

How times have changed since those innocent days! Now we find librarians replaced by information scientists who spend their time staring into screens, either on their desktops or on their handheld telephones.. The books, once the raison d'être for a librarian, are now considered a physical annoyance that must be removed to continue the transformation of cavernous repository buildings into a curious combination of coffee house, restaurant, lounge, and video arcade. In fact, dealing with the books themselves has been regulated to the lower-paid members of the staff, much like cleaning the restrooms and seasonally shoveling snow from the entryways. The current COVID-19 pandemic will only sharpen the distinction between biblioposers and their maintenance colleagues. Who would want to handle all that virus-contaminated paper if they don’t have to?

Be Careful What You Wish For

As the present pandemic pummels both our health and our economy, an interesting result has been the closure of various “non-essential” businesses and institutions. Included in the expanding list of buildings you can no longer visit are academic libraries. “Not to fear,” claim the Information Scientists who operate these bookless structures, “we can easily deliver our product over the internet.” Indeed they can, and therein is the problem.

People who feel they are getting what they need from a “library” without actually visiting the place are in danger of multiplying at a rate faster than coronavirus victims. Once they reach a critical mass it is only a matter of time before the logical question is asked, “Why are we paying for a vacant building staffed by expensive biblioposers?” If all a university library building is used for is a location for wifi connections and a place for students to order pizza while pretending to study, are there not cheaper options? If college pupils can find what they need to complete assignments by their own internet savvy, why do they need pay the exorbitant salaries of the absent occupants of these deserted physical spaces?

The coronavirus has shown what we can live with, and what we can live without. In truth, we can live without a library building that has no books, and the realization of that fact may be accelerated by the present shutdown.

A Pandering Pandemic

It began as a case of mild obsession about two decades ago, but the virus has spread rapidly across the globe. Nowhere has the impact of the virus been as severe as the United States, especially on college campuses.

No, no...we are not talking about the coronavirus; we are talking about the rapidly accelerating destruction of books in academic libraries, justified by myopic administrators by pointing to their digital daydreams. As the mounting pile of discarded books grows to Everest proportions, these digitally-addled deans continue to raise up the chimera of “digital humanities” to justify the slaughter, all while actual teaching faculty members continue to search for print venues to publish their work. History, literature, and philosophy scholars fully realize (even if the Information Scientists do not) that tenure committees are uninterested in blog citations, choosing instead to count a candidate’s actual publications. Selling the idea that a few posted scans and a scattering of web traffic statistics will be the future of academic work, Biblioposers perform a combination of medicine show theatrics with affected reverence for the academy to distract from their real agenda: the destruction of the codex.

"Books? I Don't Got To Show You No Stinkin' Books!"

Remember the good old days? You know, back when librarians actually curated book collections and cared enough to install security systems to safeguard against stealing? Stop wallowing in nostalgia, friends, because the Information Scientists now in charge of American academic libraries are actively marginalizing their print collection, and some have even gone as far as dismantling their theft detection gates as an inconvenience that forces their circulation desk personnel to actually prevent people from stealing books. This should not surprise us. Biblioposers only need the codex for a prop to be used when justifying their existence. If the collection actually shrinks there will be just that many less to move to offsite storage!

The Bookless Society, Explained

As the Information Scientists move forward with their nefarious plot to dumb down America, we think it is high time to expose the mechanics of this outrage. In the past some political regimes did not bother to hide their destruction of books, but in the twenty-first century Biblioposers are opting for a more subtle approach. Here are the six simple steps being taken by academic libraries to create an illiterate citizenry:

1) Carefully compile detailed circulation statistics to bolster the claim that reading books is on the decline.

2) Simultaneously promote “maker spaces,” petting zoos, exercise machines, virtual reality screens, and a host of other irrelevancies to push against the available storage in the library building itself.

3) Use steps 1 and 2, justify an outrageous plan to move the library’s print collection to “off-site storage” and make a few half-baked promises to fetch a given volume on any patron’s request.

4) Wait a year or two until the inconvenience of the moved collection results in a further nosedive in circulation statistics.

5) Use the declining circulation statistics to destroy the stored collection.

6) Rinse, lather, and repeat.

This knavery is being foisted on complacent taxpayers from Arkansas to Montana these days, and it will only end when the Information Scientists burn the last book. It is ingenious, in a darkly cynical way, to use the excuse of declining circulation to set in motion a process that will all but accelerate declining circulation and justify the destruction mankind's knowledge legacy. We can appreciate the Machiavellian machinations while while simultaneously condemning their practice.

Can You Live Without It?

In a world of selfie-snapping saturation we observe with some amusement the recent outrage over Facebook’s exploitation of personal information. If a person stood in the public square shouting details of his last restaurant meal to passersby and then took umbrage when his listeners repeated his dining preferences, we would consider the speaker a fool or a madman. Why is this conclusion any different from those social media sociopaths who share their most intimate life details on the internet? The expectation of privacy from those who engage in a public forum is absurd, and is yet another example of the growing idiocy promoted by the purveyors of perfidy. The fact that relatively few addicts seem to have been capable of quitting Facebook after the privacy scandal broke is yet another indication that the use of this digital drug is the ultimate opioid crisis.

To Serve and Protect?

If we accept as true the latest pablum from the ALA, “Librarians stand up for your right to read,” we must also admit that many librarians are lying down on the job. As the massacre of the printed word continues in college libraries across the country, we must ask what sort of “reading” are these former book custodians protecting?

Your right to read the latest 140 character drivel from the Orange Occupant of the Oval Office on your radio telephone is already protected without “librarian” intervention. Your right to review the latest baby goat videos and images of your friend's restaurant meal choices does not depend on a diligent depository denizen declaring defense. Your right to be totally misinformed by a lack of ability to read beyond the length of a bumper sticker does not hinge on a biblioposer’s policing.

In a way Information Scientists ARE defending your right to consume electronic nibbles so easily digested since they are eliminating the alternative at an astonishing rate.

Another Voice Crying in the Digital Wilderness

We have been celebrating here at True Archives whenever we note further advocacy of print and sanity on the Internet. Here for the first time we feature the work of Jen Sorensen, a talented and award winning cartoonist who contributes to DailyKos and other progressive publications. Check her out here.

Not only is this cartoon funny, insightful, timely and wise, it also saves us the trouble of altering another classic comic or pulp magazine article for this month's entry! How could we possibly top this?

Roosevelt Ramblings

Don't get us wrong; here at True Archives we love Theodore Roosevelt. The 26th President of the United States was a prime example of a man who was born rich and yet rose above it. Roosevelt was a native New Yorker, a trait he shares with the current idiot who occupies the Oval Office, but instead of the drooling illiteracy displayed by the Orange Orangutan, Teddy was an intellectual who devoured books and wrote dozens himself.

Perhaps this is what pains us as we point out the current lunacy regarding a planned "Theodore Roosevelt Library" by boosters in the Badlands of North Dakota. At a cost of over 85 million dollars, the people are pushing to build a "library" which will HAVE NO BOOKS AND NO ARCHIVES!!!!! Teddy's papers are already held by Harvard and several other institutions that have real libraries (you know, the kind with books) and the North Dakota promoters seem to feel that having computer kiosks with scanned documents from those repositories will constitute a legitimate claim to be a "library."

A museum with interactive computer exhibits dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt is a fine idea, but we say call it what it is: a MUSEUM! Make no mistake, every attempt to label a bookless institution a "library" cheapens the institution and increases the power of the biblioposers who want a society of mushy-brained cell phone addicts. Teddy himself would call not "Bully" on such a place, but probably would use another term that begins with the same four letters.