[anigbrowl]

Sorry, I don't think popularity should be a factor in library decision-making. Extremely popular books driven by massive marketing campaigns predictably translate into the same book being available for only a few dollars months later. This all sounds like it's driven much more by the needs of publishers than library users; consider that the more reduced the selection, the fewer people will come to use the library because they can't find enough interesting material to read.

My local Half-Price Books (a second-hand bookstore chain) has a vastly better selection than my local library.

[phil21]

This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here. Your average person should be able to find utility in a library.

University libraries of course might be a good exception to this rule. But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family. And that means providing the materials they want to read - not what you think they should.

It's always going to be a balance for librarians. They don't get to operate in ivory towers disconnected from those local taxpayers whom fund them.

[anigbrowl]

Utility is in having a big selection of books. If a large chunk of the library is just multiple copies of previously popular books, then you are cutting people off from discover the range of books that are available. I would never have found authors like Stanislaw Lem or or Robert Heinlein as a teenager if it hadn't been for the library; the science fiction sections in bookstores at the time were clogged with movie adaptation novellas and mostly forgettable trilogies/franchise works.

As a library-funding taxpayer myself, I find it very depressing that the selection in my local libraries is so lacking. Hence my remark about the vast superiority of second-hand bookstores for just about any topic.

[sapphicsnail]

> But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family. And that means providing the materials they want to read - not what you think they should.

It's pretty classicist to assume that only rich people are reading those kinds of books. I have plenty of friends who struggle to pay rent who read dense stuff like philosophy, lit. theory, etc. This whole David Brooks style paternalism drives me crazy.

[Amezarak]

> This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here.

Why should I support a public entertainment center? The original American libraries were created to make valuable and educational works accessible to the public, not pulp. Library systems all over the country have discarded most of this stuff in favor of political, romance, mysteries and kids books. Abandoning their original mission is exactly why their public support has collapsed. Nobody cares about a place for homeless people to browse the Internet or to check out video games and movies.

> But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family.

"Reading" is already maximally accessible, nobody needs a library to do this. Kids are reading reams and reams of web fiction. If anything, the increasingly low quality of library fare is related to the poor reading level of Americans generally - children's books have become especially atrocious, but even pulp mystery fiction is written on a very low reading level. “We have to get them to READ” is a completely pointless and meaningless goal if the public benefit is to keep up romance fiction publisher profits.

[anigbrowl]

Speaking of children's books being atrocious, more and more people are turning up examples of AI-generated books in libraries. I know Librarians aim to screen out this sort of stuff but they seem to be missing the mark. Part of the problem is that some publishers appear to mix AI stuff into their catalogs and some libraries are just buying based on the cover and summary text.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiai/comments/1rnjx1e/i_found_thi...

https://www.governing.com/artificial-intelligence/how-local-...

[dredmorbius]

Yours seems to be an unpopular opinion. Perhaps you could partner with Bertrand Russell: <https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13524206M/Unpopular_essays>.

I'm also reminded by an observation of the late Robert K. Merton, on latent vs. manifest functions. Originally coined in the context of sociology, but far more broadly applicable. In discussing these, Merton makes the perceptive observation that because latent functions are not immediately apparent, obvious, or significant, they represent a greater increment of knowledge and understanding than manifest functions, which are obvious, evident, easily understood and communicated, etc.

Popular works, or opinions, tend to be more accessible, yes. But they are also frequently a lower increment of knowledge or utility.

I too am pained by book and other information collections which pander to easy accessibility at a cost to insight and significance. That isn't to say that libraries should discount popularity at all, but I cringe when it seems to be the primary consideration.

By extension, other mass-context systems (markets, mass media, etc.) also tend toward minimum viable standards (often mis-stated as "least common denominator", problematic in several ways), and discount both long-term (non-obvious, non-apparent) benefits and costs.

[jubilanti]

> I don't think popularity should be a factor in library decision-making.

How dare librarians... give the people the books they want to read???

[anigbrowl]

Well, I should have said the overriding factor, but my reasoning is that a lot of what appears to be 'popularity' is just the result of marketing campaigns by publishers, as opposed to the sort of enduring popularity that comes from being loved by readers (which can't be determined until some time after a book's release).

That said, I would still prioritize variety over pure popularity. For example, I can see a library having 2 or 3 copies of all the Harry Potter books because people keep checking them out, but I don't think they need 10 copies.

[jubilanti]

And your sense of what books are truly quality is in no way impacted by "marketing" to you? Let me guess, are you one of those people who thinks that ads work on other people, but not them?

Your idea of what makes a book good or bad is as much influenced by the marketing you are exposed to. You're just subjected to a different kind of marketing than the general public.