The government and Big Library are taking away our books! Last year they threw out more books than any year before! Why? Because the government told them to! As our librarian Mrs Parkinson revealed to us in an exclusive interview, “Every year we weed some books. Last year in June, over the course of second semester, at some point all of the schools in Peel participated in a weeding that was mandated by the ministry. So it was a bit bigger. So in June we got a bit more.” She continued with more damning testimony: “Weeding is a natural process that happens in every library. Sometimes people think it’s a bad thing. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
We needed to know more about such a bizarre, abnormal practice. So we probed further asking Mrs. Parkinson about the weeding process. “We can gather all sorts of data, so we look at the age of the book, condition of the book…” “…We look at checkouts if it’s an older copy of an older book and it hasn’t been checked out in the last few years, then we might not replace it, we might weed it. The other thing we keep data about is, for example, the mythology project. There are projects where students come in and use the books.” The library picks out the old and in poor condition, what kind of monsters would do that? Books deserve more! So what if the pages are stuck together, words are covered by stains, or even if some pages are missing? What’s really more important reading a book or the history of the copy itself?
But why is the government instructing Big Library to rip away precious books from our shelves? It’s for one reason and one reason only: to shove their woke morals down all of our throats! Ministry Directive 18 lays out a three step process to sanitize school libraries across the Peel Board. As the first step of Directive 18 lays out, “The criteria used for weeding will vary depending on the section. For non-fiction, the condition, age, accuracy, and relevance of the facts in the resource are considered. For fiction, circulation data is also taken into account.” That’s right: they want to take away our stained textbooks from the early 2000’s and the novels with years of dust built upon them. How dare they!
If the mass weeding of our precious ancient texts wasn’t enough, steps two and three of Directive 18 have more sickening news. “Step 2 focuses on the acquisition of diverse, inclusive, anti-racist, and culturally relevant materials. Step 3 involves reviewing the collection to identify voices, identities, and perspectives that are overrepresented, underrepresented, and missing.” They want to take away the same voices and perspectives we’ve read since the dawn of writing for these new alternative voices. Well, what if I don’t want change? Hasn’t the board considered that! It’s not too late though, as non-fiction is set to undergo these next steps by December 2023 and fiction is set to undergo them by June 2024. It may be too late for nonfiction but we can fight for bygone morals in our fiction books.
We asked Mrs.Parkinson what happens to the books when they get weeded and the truth is earth shattering. “Sometimes, if it’s in bad condition but people like it, we will replace it. I’ll weed one copy but I’ll get a brand new copy, so within four or five months it’s replaced in the collection.” But that wasn’t all. When asked further, she responded: “Because there’s multiple reasons, including sometimes mold and damage that they’re weeded out, they’re supposed to be disposed of. There’s a set of policies of how they’re supposed to be disposed of, um, because of concerns. ‘Cause there can be health implications as well. There are some, like you might see public libraries or other ones where if it’s not being weeded out for health concerns there might be like a book sale or a discard you can take it, that sort of thing. We don’t tend to do that as much.” That’s right; they’re taking our perfectly good mold-encrusted books and sending them to a library upstate (AKA a dump or recycling center!) The audacity!
So why is the government and Big Library conspiring together? Because they plot to make us dumber by taking away our (perfectly good) text books from the 90s and 2000s and the moldy pages of the novels written by old white men. The true backbone of our society! We need to fight and protest and riot! We can’t let the government tell us to change! If we want to stay in the past, our libraries should do the same! As Ms. Parkinson said in a closing statement, “The library is ever changing. Like when they first created libraries you paid, and then they became free. And then, you know, now we have computers. They didn’t have computers because they used to be just books. Now there’s services, supplies, there’s all sorts of things. So I think people hear the word library and think it’s stagnant, but it’s an ever-changing system to meet the needs of people. And I think that people need to remember that change isn’t necessarily bad in a library because you always want to be meeting the needs of whoever your patrons are.”
THE NORTH STAR 