Community service: Vetting my local library's children's space books | Hacker News Reader

Community service: Vetting my local library's children's space books

planetary.org

35 pointssohkamyung14 comments

This seems awful lot like book burning to me.

As a child, I was most inspired not by books that were dull, factually recent and accurate, but by books that were beautifully told with explaining illustrations - even though they explained space probes 2 generations old. So what. They still felt awesome and ingenious to me, while the underlying machinery was simple enough to be explained to 8-12 year old.

I am really sad that the author would burn the second one and keep the first one.

Oh, and guess what - even that shiny up-to-date book is now 20 years out of date, but I still love science :)

Librarians, especially in shelf-space-limited libraries, do actually cull books routinely. A librarian I know says it's a tough job because of precisely the "book-burning" issue.

Seems to me that enlisting experts to help is a welcome innovation.

That being said, I haven't seen a copy of "You Will Go to the Moon" by Mae and Ira Freeman in forty years. Flat-screen TVs! Space stations! Reaction mass!

Yes, what struck me was that a book that is inaccurate due to subsequent increases in knowledge of the solar system is not necessarily wrong for the date of publication. A book - which is mentioned - that gives current [to the date of publication] theories is particularly interesting because this sort of information often seems to get lost and only the winning theory gets well recorded.

These sorts of books seem like a great educational opportunity helping kids to realise that not everything is known and what we think we know can be challenged and found wanting. It also quite clearly illustrates the problems of source materials in history.

So, it's right that information that is factually wrong gets separated but the approach as presented in the article seems narrow-minded.

One can't help but reflect on what will happen to the books she vetoes, they may well get passed on to third-world countries; I'm pretty sure that happens with "discarded from stock" books in the UK.

On the other hand, some kid who is researching a report for school may actually need factual and accurate information. It seems possible they'll use the web to fill in the gap, but a lot of parents are very reserved about letting elementary school kids use the web, and many teachers require library research as part of the reports.

For that matter, suppose some kid compares what he learns on the web to what he learns in a library? He'll find the library is inaccurate and out of date and not to be trusted. A relic of days gone by. Soon he'll be part of a generation that sees no point in having libraries and our entire library system will be in jeopardy.

Quoting myself:

>"it's right that information that is factually wrong gets separated" //

Addressing your second para, they'll find that the information doesn't tally, that doesn't mean the library is wrong necessarily - if you compare 2 websites you're as likely to find a conflict. Looking at publication dates and other indicators is an important part of research; realising a 1970s book won't have the latest info on Mars is a very important part of research and part of the process that children should go through. Insulating kids from the issues of verifying sources is right at some level (hence my comment quoted above) but ultimately one wants to have pupils finding conflicting sources.

I agree that the library should make sure that there's up-to-date information around for this. However, surely one of the purposes of doing library research for school would be to teach to take things like "when this book was published" into account.

For a bright student (older age groups especially) it might even proivde an opportunity to remark on how old theories get updated when there's new information available. Sending probes serves a purpose.

On the other hand, local libraries can't keep books forever -- there are space issues. At some point a librarian needs to be able to justify new purchases for the science section and so some books need to go. To play devil's advocate, why would you want to deny children new books with the latest pictures and news, and instead lead them to think that all space exploration was done and over two generations ago? Why would you want to refuse them pictures of comets from space and restrict them to hand-drawn imaginings of space life grounded in the dreams of the 1960s?

I think you don't need to be so sad.

> This book was an example of an interesting trend: I found that books illustrated with art rather than photos tended to age better.

The books that inspired you as a child and the books with illustrations that "age better" are probably many of the same ones.

It's not "book burning", it's just the routine collection maintenance that goes on in every library, every day. These books are usually given away or sold for pocket change, so "burning" really isn't apt even if it were out of the ordinary for a library to weed old titles.

In 6th grade (1986), my Georgia school was terribly poor and outdated. The newest book on space had a sentence I will never forget as long as I live: "If we ever land on the moon, we may find it is teeming with life."

It was difficult to be a child in rural Georgia that wanted to read everything in existence on space, physics, etc. before the internet.

Sounds like where I grew up (also rural Georgia). I think I'm a couple of years younger than you, but I distinctly remember when I hit the 6th grade in 1988 and suddenly had access to an encyclopedia that was newer than 1964.

That said, I did enjoy the antiquated references for what they were.

I'm trying to remember if my rural Georgia elementary school even had a library. Surely it must have, but I can't remember any space books in it. We did have a "book fair" that came around a couple times a year and I got a wonderful, new space book there.

The tiny town library had a bunch of Tom Swift books from the 1930s or whenever that I devoured. First books I remember choosing to read myself. Which probably explains a lot, actually.

I wonder if this sort of approach actually interferes with children learning one of the most important lessons there is about science - it changes. What sets scientific inquiry apart from many other approaches is the willingness to identify, admit to, and resolve errors/omissions in the face of superior evidence.

Granted, if I wanted to learn about the moon, or rockets specifically I'd want the most up to date text I could find, but if that was all I read I'd end up learning less about science itself.

Of course, if the book is simply a chronology of events there's merit in expanding its range.

I don't know if the target audience being children makes this a non-issue, or an even bigger issue?

(And yes, I'm aware of and obsessed with this book - http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thoma... :-) )

Well, it's a library, not a Wikipedia article. And these don't seem to be textbooks. Frankly, I'm not shocked that there are old, 'outdated' books around.

Old books might provide some perspective that to science go forward and expand, there's a place where it left from. Assuming they are in good physical condition, and their contents were solid in their time, and other such practical considerations of running a library (like limited space for books and so on) are taken into account.

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