🚀 go-pugleaf

  I missed the start of the thread on this while I was out of town,
but I gather that somebody wanted to keep his local library's copy of
Carlo's book since:

  a. No one else was checking it out,
  b. the book's out of print, and not available elsewhere, and
  c. it's such a lousy book, the library would be better off carrying
a more informative book.

  Jesse Schell responded that the guy should steal the book.  I
thought he was joking, but after some e-mail between us we both agree
that the best thing to do would be for me to post this, rather than
just quietly sitting back and watching the note tacitly condone what I
take to be censorship.

  Hey fella, stealing a library book is never ethical.  To me there's
no difference between rationalizing why you should steal the book, and
censoring something you don't agree with.  You might ask me about
where to draw the line as to which books "belong" in a public library,
and which don't.

   I say one doesn't draw a line.  All these books deserve a place in
the library.  Carlo's book will be indispensable to a researcher who
decides one day to study the resurgence of juggling in the last third
of the 20th century.  It is right in tune with the meditative aspects
of juggling that attracted people in the 70s, as opposed to the
theatrical and technical aspects that Finnigan stresses.

  A valid point Jesse made is that he has tried to buy books from
libraries that were never getting checked out.  They would expressly
refuse to sell him the books, and then one day quietly "discard" them
"because so few people would ever borrow [them]."

  The solution to the problem isn't to "lose" the borrowed books.
Convince your local library to sell off its castaways.  The Ottawa
library system has a small book store for that purpose.  Tell your
library about it.  Have the library administrator give the Ottawa
Public Library's business office a call at 613/598-4004 (Eastern
Time), and let him or her find out first-hand what a good source of
revenue this would be for cash-strapped libraries.

  Stealing books...  Next thing you'll be building wooden triangles
with internal sequencers that play music when you bounce balls off them.
-- 
-- Eric Promislow--emp@xgml.com--Exoterica Corporation, Ottawa, Ontario