If you are familiar with how public libraries operate, you know that they must constantly weed their shelves of books to create space for new books. The old book are sometimes sold to library patrons as cheap used books, donated to charity or simply hauled to the dump. Libraries generally get rid of books that haven't been checked out.
Two library staffers at the East Lake County Library in Florida created a fake patron who checked out books that the two staffers wanted to save.
Via Tyler Cowen, who remarks, "Data falsification will be one of the biggest stories of the next five years."
This brings up a point that I've tried to raise before. If you want Robert Anton Wilson's books to be available at the library to be discovered by new readers, borrow them!
2 comments:
Since RAW's books are all paperback originals, and none will show up in the monthly book recommendations guides used by library systems to determine what to add to their collections, few libraries are likely to have them in the first place. The Sonoma County main library does have one library bound copy of Illuminatus! but nothing else. My hardback copy of Illuminatus! came from a library book sale a few years ago but it was a donation not a discard.
Actually, no, libraries can buy all sorts of RAW books if they choose to. If Wilson is absent it's a choice by the local library. I just ran a search of the CLEVNET library network (Cleveland Public Library and other northern Ohio libraries) and the following works are available: Prometheus Rising, The Illuminati Papers, Cosmic Trigger 1, Cosmic Trigger 2, Right Where You Are Sitting Now, The Widow's Son, and on and on. Three copies of Illuminatus! are available.
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