Weeding the Library

by Kiri Jorgensen- Publisher and Senior Editor

I love to grow vegetables in the garden. During the season, I spend time preparing the soil, planting, weeding, watering, thinning, and singing to my plants. Getting my fingers in the dirt and aiding the growth of tasty food is something I find a lot of enjoyment in. Weeding is the dirtiest, the most consistent, and the most frustrating of the tasks. If you don’t keep up on it every day, soon your vegetables will be overrun.

Did you know that librarians weed their libraries? That’s actually what they call it—weeding out their collections. The goal with weeding a library is to remove the books that aren’t being checked out very often to make room for new titles that hopefully will be checked out more. Librarians have been weeding for centuries, but in the last ten years, things have changed.

Librarians nowadays don’t weed out the books that are unpopular with their constituents, they weed out the books they don’t like. If a librarian doesn’t agree with the content of the book, they will pull it off the shelf and throw it away. Literally. It’s even come to the point that if the librarian doesn’t agree with the author, they’ll pull their books off the shelf.

Rather than supplying books their audiences want to read, libraries today force their members to read only what the librarians want them to read.

This is especially stark in the children’s library rooms. Many classics filled with traditional values and representations of historical thought have been “weeded out” to make room for modern stories filled with social agendas. Acceptance of multiple sexual identities and pushing the concept of systemic racism have replaced the portrayal of traditional virtues as requirements in books for 10-year-olds.

In the 2020 election cycle, 93% of librarians who donated to a political campaign donated to Joe Biden. 93%. To the thousands of families that have stopped going to their public libraries since then, this is no surprise. There’s a direct correlation between these librarians and the absence of traditional virtues on the shelves in the children’s section.

Much is shouted about the books being ‘banned’ by conservative voices. Most of the shouts are inaccurate. That’s a topic for another day. But what is largely ignored by the media is the incredible “weeding out” of traditional titles, thus making these books truly unavailable to kids. In the name of enlightenment, librarians have removed access to anything they don’t agree with or won’t spread their ideologies.

I know there are pockets of good librarians out there. People who truly care about the kids they serve and want to provide them with clean, age-appropriate content. These librarians are facing the storms head-on every day. I commend them. But I also know they are being worn down, and leaving the profession early, only to be replaced by those who join the “majority” of modern library thought.  

The weeding of the library is very different than the weeding of my garden. I work hard to remove the plants that will be detrimental to my vegetables and fruits. I want my crops to be as healthy and robust as possible so I can enjoy a bounteous harvest in the future.

When a library is weeded by modern terms, the healthy crops are being pulled up and thrown away to let the detrimental weeds thrive and spread with the goal of overtaking.

At Chicken Scratch Books, this is a goal we will continue to stand against.