The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92161   Message #1758251
Posted By: Scoville
12-Jun-06 - 03:28 PM
Thread Name: BS: If it was up to you...
Subject: RE: BS: If it was up to you...
I'm sure we'll hear from a lot of full-fledged librarians about this. I'm a library student/employee, at least.

I'm with Peace but in more general terms, you can't disagree with what you don't know about/don't understand. Assuming I wasn't running a subject-specific library (for instance, I work in a medical school library. We don't have much use for Coulter's work regardless of whether or not we agree with it because she's not a medical writer.), the ideal is that we stock some of everything. We're not supposed to be censors.

In a fantasyland of unlimited space and funds, I would probably stock it. Sandwiched between Al Franken and Molly Invins, of course (just kidding).

Digitization isn't perfect, either. You still have to have enough computers to give enough people access if they cannot download it to their home computers/don't have home computers, and a lot of digital material comes with rather heavy licensing fees. It doesn't require the storage, of course, but the initial cost and renewals can be almost as much as print.