I do regard mass destruction of our library books as a free speech issue; there is no better way to suppress a person's ideas than by (figuratively) burning their books.
You can read the full text either by clicking here for a PDF or by viewing the full post below:
To Don Viss, Chair of the YCCD Board of
Trustees, and to my Colleagues:
Last
year, Nine Million in Taxpayer Dollars
was spent to renovate our main library.
This was done on the promise to make space for our collection of 75,000
books. During this renovation, however, MJC librarians destroyed 70% of our
75,000-volume collection. No book sales, no donations. They simply tossed 52,500 of our books into
the trash to make the library a more inviting gathering place for students!
The enormity of this
crime boggles the mind. Neither
Trustees, faculty nor students were informed of or consulted with prior to
this vile act. In fact, most
faculty and students are not even aware that it happened. When we (the unsuspecting public) visited our
renovated library, it didn't even look like a library. The impressive rows of tall bookcases from
earlier years were nowhere to be seen.
When I asked the librarians, "Where
have all the books gone," nobody could say. I thought maybe they had donated the books to
Africa. But, now we know better. We have eyewitnesses: Crews
of students defaced our books, 52,000 of them, and then tossed them into the
trash.
So, how did we learn
what happened to our books? When YAL
newspaper (edited by Robert Van Tuinen) was searching for a story, I laughingly
suggested that we do an article on our library book-burning. One of the students said, “I didn’t hear that
they burned any books. They just tossed
them into the trash bins.” He was
there. He was part of the crew of
students hired to deface our books, using markers to obliterate library
markings before discarding them. Click here
to see pictures and his story from the Pirates Journal: http://issuu.com/robertvantuinen/docs/pirates_journal_volume_2_issue_1/1
Be advised that this email is a protected disclosure. I am filing this communication under YCCD
Policy 7700, Whistleblower Protection. Retaliation against a Whistle Blower is
punishable by up to a year in the county jail and a $10,000 fine. I also am
asking for an independent investigation
by the CCCCO into the crimes that I
believe to have been committed in this desecration of our library. Additionally, I am formally requesting that
the Academic Senate look into this destruction of 70% of our print
collection. Page 50 of the Faculty Handbook states: “the Library
is generally the intellectual center of academic instruction.” Protecting the intellectual center of our
College surely is an important faculty duty.
Let me clarify
what I am charging and what is involved in YCCD Policy 7700, Whistleblower Protection. The purpose of Policy 7700 is to provide that
individuals are “encouraged” to report suspected unlawful activities by
District employees without fear of retaliation – activities that violated state
or federal law or District Policy. 7700
is in conformity with California Education Code Sections 87160-87164. This article shall be known as the Reporting by Community College Employees of
Improper Governmental Activities Act.
This Code facilitates “protected disclosure” of an activity that violates
a state or federal law or regulation, including, but not limited to, … theft
or misuse of government property, or an activity that is economically
wasteful.
In the following, I review evidence about the
numbers of books destroyed, and argue that this was neither normal nor
justified “weeding.” While much of this email is highly critical of Jillian
Daly, Dean of the Library, I cannot believe that she acted alone in this mass
book-destruction. MJC President Jill
Stearns, and YCCD Chancellor Joan Smith are her superiors, and it is not plausible that she acted
independently of their direction and orders.
My central claim
is that Stearns and Smith did unlawfully usurp the authority of the Governing
Board (the Board of Trustees) when they ordered this massive destruction of
District Property without the consent of the Trustees, who were not even consulted on the matter. This clearly (as I establish in Exhibit A at the end of this email) violates YCCD
Policy 6550 on the Disposal of Surplus Property, and it clearly violates California
Ed Code 81450 – 81453. I believe that
this secret destruction of a resource so dear to our community at large not
only violated the above stated Ed Code (which is California law), but
that it also violated the stated policies of the Library, as well as
violating Ed Code 70902 regarding shared governance, meant in part to ensure that
faculty and students have a voice in the governance of the College.
Given that thousands of books were unlawfully
taken and thrown into the trash, it seems to me that those responsible are guilty
of theft. Tossing the goods that one
has unlawfully taken does not clear one of theft. Perhaps investigations also should be made
into whether or not librarians, deans, or other administrators took some of the
“culled” books for their own personal use or to sell for personal profit. It also should be determined whether or
not it is legal for a library to discard thousands of books without keeping a
record of its discarded inventory. We also should be told how many of the tall
bookshelves were in the old library, how much shelf space they had, and what
was the manner of their disposal. Such bookshelves do have monetary value.
Finally, even if
the Trustees had voted to discard thousands of our books, it would have been economically wasteful not to sell
them. A librarian at CSUS said that
sometimes books are tossed because it is determined that it would cost more to
have a sale than it would be worth. When
I told the librarian that the Friends of the Library could be called on to sell
the books, and that sometimes they make a couple thousand dollars in such a
sale, she said “Oh, sometimes they make much more than that.” Besides, Ed Code reserves it to the
Governing Board to decide by unanimous
vote of all members present, that the value of the property is insufficient
to defray the costs of a sale.
YCCD
7700 states that “when the alleged unlawful activity involves the Chancellor,
the report should be made to the Chair of the Board of Trustees, who at this
time is Mr. Don Viss. When he receives
this report that I am sending to all at MJC, Mr. Don Viss is responsible for
ensuring that a prompt and complete investigation is made by an individual with
the competence and objectivity to conduct the investigation, with the
assistance of an outside investigator and counsel if deemed necessary.
So that we can
have confidence in the objectivity and impartiality of his investigation, I
believe that Mr. Viss should make available to us all the detailed results of
his report, including any communications between the YCCD Chancellor and any
Trustees regarding this book destruction.
Complete transparency is the only
remedy to restore confidence and lost trust. I am following that advice myself in this
email to everyone at MJC. YCCD
Administrative Policy 7700 Whistleblower Protection (line 18-19) says:
“employees are strongly encouraged not to report anonymously.” Following that Policy, my public
disclosure is as far from being anonymous as one can get.
It has been asked, “What is the point in bringing this up so
long after it is done? It won’t bring
the books back.” Well, our
protest is so late because these criminals have been so successful in hiding
their crime! Should criminals be rewarded for successful cover-ups? (Violating California Law is a crime. Ca Ed Code is Californian law.)
Second, even if
nothing will bring back your murdered child, you want justice. We want the
offenders punished for their crimes, we want them to restore what they have
unlawfully destroyed, and we want assurance
it will not happen again.
When I told my friend,
Ben Starr (former Philosophy Instructor here) what had been done to our
library, his immediate response was “That
is criminal, Bill!” Was my
friend misusing the word “crime”? With
this question in mind, I consulted my Webster’s
Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Under listing six, we find that one meaning
of “crime” is “reprehensible” or “disgraceful” as in “it is a crime to waste
good food.” Yes, the word fits. When I checked the etymology of “crime,” I saw
that it is “akin to OGH scrian, to
cry out – more at SCREAM.” That fits
even better. What they did to our library makes us cry out – it makes us want to
SCREAM. But, even better, down a few
inches we find the legal term, “Crimen Extraordinarium”: a crime in Roman law
that was considered extraordinary in that punishment was not fixed by earlier
written law but was left to the discretion of the judge.”
When I tell people
outside MJC what was done to our library, their reaction invariably is the
same: shock, anger, stunned disbelief, bewilderment, outrage. They cannot believe that librarians would do
such a thing. If vandals had sneaked into our library in the middle of night and
destroyed 52,500 of our library books, we would be outraged. We would demand an accounting and restitution. We should feel even more outrage that this
crime was committed by librarians who were supposed to love and protect the
books left in their sacred trust.
When
I wrote about our book destruction to Ben Starr, a retired philosophy professor
who had taught here more than 30 years, his immediate reaction was, "That's criminal, Bill. That library was one of the
best of all the community colleges in California." Indeed it was a wonderful collection, full of books waiting to be discovered or
rediscovered. My friend went on to add,
“when I go into a library, I like to browse. Some of my best discoveries were
made when I was researching a topic and saw a book that looked interesting;
picked it up and found a whole new world of ideas. Can't do that on a computer!"
So, how much damage
did those librarians wreak on our library?
The answer is that it has been gutted. A once wonderful collection has been reduced
to something pitiful, pathetic, and shameful. It
barely meets high school standards.
For example, there are only about 200 books in the philosophy section! Ben was incredulous. He and I both have more philosophy books than
that in our private collections. For an example of what now is missing, MJC
doesn’t have Hume's Treatise, not
even in e-book. They don't have the
complete works of Plato, Aristotle, or Aquinas. They don't have Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Blue and Brown Books, or his Philosophical
Investigations, not even in e-books. (It is possible that Sue Adler ordered the PI
upon my complaint.) They don't have the Haldane and Ross
collection of Descartes' works, no Hobbes' Leviathon,
no Bentham's Theory of Fictions. They don't have George Berkeley's works, nor
do they have Martin Gardiner's Fads and
Fallacies in the Name of Science.
They have Russel's History of
Western Philosophy and his Marriage
and Morals only in e-book form, and only an article on his Why I am not a
Christian. When I asked Ben whether our
library had those books when he was still teaching here, he said he knew
they did because he had recommended those books. Now, those classics are in the trash. It is an embarrassment to have such a shabby collection.
Ben Starr wrote
that during his years here, faculty was closely consulted on which books to
keep, discard, or add: “When the librarian felt the need to do some culling to
make room for some new books; later editions, etc., each faculty member
was asked to visit the library and note which books could reasonably be culled
(for example because a better edition was available), which should be saved,
and which we were not sure about. Any book that any faculty member wanted
saved was saved! Those we were not sure about were saved. The only
ones discarded were those that all faculty members of a particular area agreed
should be given away or sold. I don't believe any were put in the trash
or "recycled." I don't know the number of stacks, but I do know
they pretty much filled the library. Same with the number of
philosophy books, though I do know that when I started teaching at MJC, the
librarian came to my office, introduced himself, and asked me to please come to
the Library -- he wanted me to go through the philosophy collection and give
him a list of any additional books he should order. He told me that since
I had just received my degree, I would be the best person to advise him on
which books to order to update the collection. There was a real librarian!
” I believe that this policy so loved by
Professor Starr continues to be MJC Library Policy – it just isn’t followed. Dean Daley cites it, but seems to not have
followed it:
When one of the Trustees (Anne DeMartini) saw the Pirate Journal
and asked the Chancellor what had happened to the books, Jillian Daly (Library
Dean) provided Trustees with an undated and unsigned “Collection and
Development Policy.” That Policy was issued
by a former Library Dean, Dr. Tobin Clarke.
Presumable Daly provided this Policy because it described the Policy
that guided her in the Great Book Destruction.
That Policy states that “Librarians will consult standard library reviewing sources and use
their professional skills when making selection decisions. In addition, librarians will draw on instructional facultys’
expertise as a resource for selection and evaluation of the collection”
(underlines mine). Clearly, this Policy was violated during the mass destruction of tens
of thousands of our books, as it was
done without most faculty even being aware of the book destruction.
Daly also cites a Modesto Junior College Weeding Policy that states, among other
things, that “Weeding
is done in consultation with MJC Library and classroom faculty, to ensure that
materials of historical or research interest are not inadvertently removed.
The Dean of
Library, Learning Resources, and Technology reviews all items that are
recommended for weeding. Once again, this MJC Weeding
Policy cited by Daly was VIOLATED during the rushed destruction of 70% of our
print collection: Classroom faculty was not
consulted to ensure that materials of historical or research interest were not removed. Nor is it plausible that Daly, the Library
Dean, reviewed all of the tens of thousands of items recommended for weeding as
required by policy.
I already have mentioned that books of historical
and research interest (books that also would clearly qualify as Classics -- such
as Hume’s Treatise and Wittgensteins’
Philosophical Investigations) were
among the books destroyed. I know they
were destroyed only because Ben Starr remembers them, and they were not on file
when I checked. But, we have no way of knowing which other classics
or important books were discarded because we are told that THE
LIBRARY HAS NO RECORD OF WHICH BOOKS THEY DISCARDED! How is this possible – and how is it LEGAL
-- for them to discard 52,000 books, and have no record of what they tossed
into the trash? I was told that
their computers were not up to the task of recording that many titles. This simply is not believable. But, isn’t that convenient for them? Nobody can complain about which books they destroyed, because they
don’t keep records of their primary
inventory – the books on the shelves!
This all looks very suspicious to me.
Whenever you
buy a discarded book from the little shelf near the library exit, they always
record the sale. With this kind of
record-keeping, a librarian could simply
walk away with some expensive Art books she likes, and nobody would know that
they were not just one of those “unrecorded” discards. In fact, we have no way of knowing this did
not happen during their great book destruction.
Some people have told me that they saw stacks of books on a person’s
desk during that time, with stickers saying, “Save for X” where that was the
name of a librarian. And, Daly said that
some of the books were offered to Deans. Which books and which Deans, and was
that for their personal use? Where are
those books? These books were District
Property, not the property of mere
employees to pass around to their friends or to take on their own. Even
if a person there at the time did not want those “discards” for their personal
use, they could make a few dollars selling them on Ebay. The Ed Code that I cite in Appendix A below
was meant to prevent such waste, abuse, and theft of public property.
Do we know how many print volumes were in the
library before the mass destruction, and how many were left? At the re-opening of the library, Daly told Nan
Austin of the Modesto Bee that the library had 75.000 volumes before the
remodeling. Also, there is
a website listing various MJC Projects funded by Proposition E
(Yosemite.edu/fmp/yccd/MJC_Projects.pdf).
On page 29 we are told: "Currently
the library has 75,000 volumes … The current facility needs to be replaced
with a new facility that will accommodate 75,000 volumes and 500 seats,
providing faculty and students with adequate facilities and
resources." This seems to be in year 2002-03. So, on a promise to our taxpayers that we
would use Prop E money to provide accommodations for our 75,000 volumes, we destroyed
70% of those books.
For futher
confirmation of how many books we had, ask at the front
desk about joining Friends of the MJC
Library. A printout dated 04/17/08 says
that members can "Borrow up to five items from the library's collection
of over 75,000 items.")
The
number of print volumes we have after
the renovation can be found in the Oct. 2014 MJC Midterm Accreditation
Report, page 25. We are told that
the present number of print volumes is roughly the same as the ebook collection
which is 22,463 titles. The math is
simple. If we now have only 22,500
print volumes left of our 75,000 collection, 52,500 books have been destroyed.
That means that 70% of our
print collection was destroyed.
When
asked to provide Trustees with an accounting of what happened to all the books,
however, Jillian Daly gives a very different accounting, one that I believe
lacks credibility. To explain how many
books were weeded, she gives the following table:
“How many books were weeded from the collection? (Please use
the period when the library moved into swing space)
|
Academic Year
|
Print Book Totals
|
Ebooks
|
Total Books
|
Average Age of Total Collection
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2006-07
|
57,074
|
5753
|
62,827
|
|
|
2007-08
|
49,717
|
13136
|
62,853
|
1978
|
|
2008-09
|
49,197
|
13206
|
62,403
|
|
|
2009-10
|
50,501
|
19131
|
69,632
|
|
|
2010-11
|
40,174
|
21507
|
61,681
|
|
|
2011-12
|
27,169
|
21587
|
48,756
|
|
|
Oct. 2014
|
|
|
|
2005
|
“ Because old, outdated material was weeded, the average
age of our collection went from 1978 in 2007 to 2005 today, resulting in a
more current, relevant collection.
She also tells us that an inventory itemizing the books
weeded from the collection cannot be provided because a system was not in place to track the titles until 2013. Unbelievable.
I believe that these Print Book Totals cannot be
correct. The 2003 Prop E says we had
75,000 books, and the Friends of the
Library handout from 2008 lists us as having 75,000 volumes.
But, according to Jillian (rounding to the nearest 100, and
assuming that her Print Total is at the end of the academic year total), then
by 2006-07 we had lost 18,000 of our
75,000 collection; by 2007-08 we lost another 7,300; by 2008-09 we lost another 500; in 2009-10 we gained back 1,300; by 2010-11 we lost
another 10,300; by 2011-2012 we lost
another 13,000; and (filling in from
the Accreditation Report total for 2014) by 2014 we had lost another 4,400.
Jillian’s numbers from this table
make no sense. If we had 75,000 books in
2003, then we lost about 6,000 each of the next three years, and 7,300 the following
year. It looks like 23,300 (about a
third of the collection) were lost in the last two years before the library was
closed for remodeling, and only 4,400 were discarded during “swing” time. But, Daly’s numbers are contrary to what we
saw in the library during those years. There
were indeed books for sale (50 cents to a dollar each) near the library
exit, but never more than three or four small shelves, certainly not hundreds or thousands of books
for sale. Besides, the big tall bookshelves were almost completely filled with
books all the way to the time that the library was closed for remodeling. I think most of our 75,000 books were
there until the library closed. So,
I submit that Daly’s numbers are totally unreliable.
Besides, Jillians’ table above seems
to contradict part of her statement
to the Trustees, where she tries to pass off the massive book dump as a long overdue weeding process. She says
that she wants to emphasize that “the collection had not been weeded in many
years and so was extremely outdated. The statistic that states that in 2007
the average collection date was 1978 and that today the average collection date
today is 2005 says everything. We were way overdue to bring the
collection up to current standards. … Most of the weeded books were discipline
specific and contained outdated information—ex. Science books from the
1950-60s. … Since the major weeding project has occurred, our emphasis
is now on developing our collections.”
Daly’s
words here do not fit with the weeding table that she presents above. According to her table, it is FALSE that the
collection had not been weeded for many years.
The table suggests that 18,000
of our books (24% of our 75,000) were culled between 2002-03 and 2006-07. And, by 2010-11 (a couple years before
remodeling began) 34,800 (46% of our
75,000 original collection) had been culled. So, her own numbers do not support
her claim that the collection “had not been weeded in many years.” Indeed, in which year does she think the
“Major Weeding” occurred? Certainly the 4,400 during swing period does not
count as a major weeding, compared to what she says occurred before. I think
the numbers in her table are wrong, and that the “Major Weeding” to which she
refers was the destruction of 70% of our 75.000 books AFTER the library closed
for remodeling. This looks like a cover-up.
Another
question about her table: If there was
no way to keep track of Titles until 2013 (an unbelievable claim), then
on what does she base the numbers she cites in that table? How could she know how many books were
culled each year if there was no system in place to track the titles until 2013? Did librarians count the books on the shelves
by hand? And, if
she has no way of keeping track of Titles, then how was she able to determine
that in 2007 the average collection date was 1978 and that today the average
collection date today is 2005? Did a librarian go to the trouble of
checking each of the tens of thousands of books in our collection, before and
after each year’s culling, and write down the collection date of each book but not its title? How are we to believe this story? It does not inspire trust or confidence.
Let
us move on to the question, how Daly justifies this carnage? Nan Austin's Jan 30, 2014 article in the Bee
quotes Jillian Daly (underlines mine):
"Waist-high bookshelves with lots of
empty space replaced the high stacks packed with 75,000 volumes before the
makeover. The light-filled rooms were designed to offer better visibility
and a more inviting atmosphere. 'This is the new philosophy of
libraries. Now they’re sort of open gathering areas,' said Jillian
Daly."
This
is stunning. According to Jillian's new
philosophy, libraries are gathering places for college students, not places for books. We need lots of open space, light and better
visibility, so get rid of the tall stacks filled with books. Books have no place in gathering places for
college students. Books are not inviting -- they are
intimidating. Well, this is NOT
the philosophy of a person who should be Dean of our Library, in charge of preserving
our heritage.
What
is equally amazing is the correction that Jillian insisted on making when she
recently was accused of dumping books in the trash: "Most of the weeded
books … get dumped in a bin (that is exactly a large grey plastic trash-can)
and then go out for recycling. They do not get dumped in the garbage. So there
may be the perception that we are throwing books in a garbage bin when the
weeding occurs, but these books get sent to recycling."
Well, shades of Auschwitz! Isn't this a
distinction without a difference?
Does dean Daly expect us to feel better
knowing that our lovely books are being recycled? It is rather like the SS insisting that they
didn't dump their dead victims into the landfill --- they put them into recycle
bins so that they could be rendered into soap and chicken feed! Never let a dead victim go to waste. Recycle! Go Green!
As
mentioned earlier, Jillian also justifies the weeding on the ground that the
collection is extremely outdated. She
waxes ecstatic that now the collection date of the books is reduced from 1978 to
2005. How can Jillian possibly take PRIDE in eliminating so many older books? This is shows utter contempt for our
cultural and intellectual history.
Student James Varble (in Rob's article) shows far more wisdom: "The
foundation of modern education is access to a library of texts collected over a
period of time. Teaching individuals to be free thinkers means that we not only
provide up to date information, but older works provide valuable perspective
on the advance of scholarship over the years."
To help us understand the necessity of weeding,
Daly gave us an article called, “Crying Over Spilled Milk.” This
librarian gives criteria and recommendations for tossing books in the trash,
and tells us how to do it with minimal outcry from the misguided lovers of
books. She says to do it gradually, and invite public to help, etc.
But she is clear on one thing: Put the discards in the trash!
Thus the title of her article: She says you wouldn't give the old
milk you are discarding to the public, so you shouldn't give the old books to
the public! She even wants old collections of short-stories PUT IN THE
TRASH. She seems to think there is nothing to be learned about our
past and who we are by reading stories and plays written in earlier times.
This is the model librarian that Jillian holds up for our admiration. Why
does this Barbarian think that some of us still mourn the burning of the
Library at Alexandria? After all, think
how outdated those books now would be!
Think of Sappho’s poems as spoiled milk.
A couple years ago, I bought some children’s books on the
discard shelf at the Turlock public library.
They were wonderful books, beautifully illustrated, and there seemed
nothing wrong with them, one of them a Caldecott award winner. They were books I had read to my children
when they were young. But when my
pregnant daughter visited and saw the treasures I had found, she immediately
took possession. She is saving them to
read to my grandchild. Those books that
Daly and Ms. Spilled-milk would have put in the recycle bin will be treasured
and passed on for generations, if my daughter has her way.
When I order older books on Amazon, probably half of them are
library discards. If it were up to Daley
and Ms. Spilled Milk, those old book would disappear. So,
why did Daly hire students to desecrate our book, rip off the covers, and
obliterate markings? The answer is
obvious: She didn’t want to risk anyone
being able to trace those books to the MJC library. It was
part of the cover-up. That also
explains why there was no huge book-sale.
Selling thousands of books would have alerted us to the mass thinning of
our collection.
Two
criteria that have been mentioned as relevant to “weeding” have been 1) the collection
date, and 2) how long since the book was last checked out. These criteria might be relevant for weeding
parts of a public library devoted to Diet fads and pulp fiction. But, this makes no sense in an academic
library where the history of a discipline is important (as it is, for example,
in Philosophy, Literature, or Art). Even
in Psychology, older works by William James, Henry Head, Watson, Skinner, etc.
can be extremely valuable and thought-provoking.
This
complaint is too long already, so let me make it even longer. What have things come to when we have to
explain to librarians and College Administrators the intellectual and cultural
importance of books? I think that the
Academic Senate should sponsor a recurring essay contest on the importance of
books in our lives. I was privileged to
be raised close to nature, in the backwoods of Oregon -- among wild iris,
maidenhair fern, trillium, wild ginger, dogwood, Douglas fir, cedar, vine
maple, blackberries and wild strawberries, wild current, ocean spray, horsetail
fern, centipedes and squirrels, banana slugs and amazing varieties of fungi. But almost my only intellectual fare was the
Readers Digest and a few books my Dad had brought back from England during WWII
(Through Space and Time by Sir James
Jeans, which made me aware of the enormous size of our sun and planets, the
vastness of our universe, and the geological ages of earth) and The Evolution of Physics by Einstein and
Infeld. Of course, my mother read to us
from her High School literature books and classics like The Last of the
Mohicans.
So,
barbarian that I was, I still remember the day that I first walked into the
University of Oregon main library. In a
room devoted to science, I was met with WALLS of books 12 ft high – walls
of knowledge. I found a book of
hand-painted plates of Wild Orchids as beautifully done as a collection of Audubon
illustrations. There was such variety
that one would have thought that God had entirely exhausted His imagination in
designing the orchids alone. I also found
a book, The Biology of Spiders, by
Theodore H. Savory that made me see spiders differently (do you know that spiders
have green blood, and what sperm webs are?) On another shelf I found a book filled with
photo plates of thousands of
different fossil spores from peat bogs in Oregon. On that day, my world was multiplied a
thousand times over. I had no idea
there was such knowledge and diversity in the natural world.
A
couple months ago, I visited the philosophy collection at the CSUS main library. It isn’t U.C. Berkeley, but their philosophy
collection is wonderful! Two walls over
six feet tall, were filled with all sorts of treasures. By my estimate, they had over 6,000 philosophy
books – three hundred times what our
once decent collection now has been reduced to.
Of course they had Hume’s Treatise,
but our librarians culled our copy, probably because it hadn’t been checked out
often enough. CSUS had books I didn’t
even know existed (a book on Loyalty
by Josiah Royce -- 1908) and other “outdated” books like Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds – first published in
1841. And what did that experience do
for me? Seeing that wonderful collection of philosophical works made me fall in love with Philosophy all over
again!
The
point of this is that I felt humbled
-- I felt a huge sense of awe -- standing
before the best that our best and brightest had produced. That
wall of books was for me a monument
to human creativity and knowledge.
And I want every student at MJC to have that same experience every time
they walk into the intellectual and cultural center of our college. I want them to feel the same awe and wonder and
to feel the privilege and the invitation of all those people who
thought they had something to say to us, and who cared enough to get someone to
publish their message to us in a book. Those
tall stacks of books provided silent testimony to the vast achievements of
human intelligence. Daley seems to worry
that those tall stacks of books might intimidate
our students. Well, it is our job to
make certain that students see those books as invitations to learning.
We can learn things even from stories
written in times long past. There are
parts of our deeper selves that are lost in times that preceded us. Read Blood
of the Lamb by Peter DeVries, and it will make you laugh and make you cry –
even if you never sat at such a table as the one he describes. Read James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake aloud, and in the nonsense syllables you and your
children will find the alphabet soup of your existence, even if you never have
seen the bonny emerald hills of Ireland. In his Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce can make some of us cry for Parnell,
even though we have no idea who Parnell was.
And, The Best Stories of Wilber
Daniel Steele (1946) has two of the best short stories ever written, How Beautiful with Shoes, and The Man Who Saw Through Heaven. If you ran across this collection while
browsing in our library, you might pick it up, and it would enrich your life. But, MJC does not have it, and we don’t know
if they ever did. But, I do know this
one thing: James Joyce was one of the
best writers ever to live, and now he is stone dead in the ground.
His marvelous brain is gone, his skull is empty. But, when you read from his Portrait of the Artist, his genius still
speaks to us from those pages. When you
hold in your hands the books written by those who came before, you hold all that remains of them, all that
they were allowed to leave behind.
Daly
says that weeding was done in part to keep the collection browse-able. Ben Starr mentioned that one of the most
valuable aspects of the library experience was that we might run across
unexpected treasures while browsing.
Some commentators mention that browsing can be particularly rewarding in
a good library because librarians for
years have been developing systems to catalogue books according to their
subject matter. So, you might be
more apt to discover a book relevant to your research purposes by browsing in a
good library than by doing a google search or an Amazon Books search.
However,
the recent changes at the MJC library make browsing far less profitable than
it was. First, the destruction of
70% of our original collection makes it far less likely that your browsing will
be profitable because most of the books
you would have discovered by browsing are in the recycle bin. Second, now that the tall bookshelves are
gone, you have to bend over or squat to
do your browsing, which is uncomfortable.
Third, given that a large percent of the books available are e-books,
not print copies, a large portion of the books that might have been discovered
by browsing will not be found by browsing, because they are not on the
shelves. Finally, there are salient
disadvantages to “browsing” online (checking books recommended by a google
search). When you locate a book on the
shelf by browsing, you can open the book and sample its contents. But, the book online will not usually allow a
complete examination, and older books more often cannot be examined without
actually getting a copy of the book.
It
also should be mentioned that there are advantages and disadvantages when
libraries go digital. Of course it is
wonderful that so many articles and books are available digitally. But, many people find that they comprehend
what they are reading better if they print out the manuscript, and printing out
an entire book can be problematic.
Sometimes reading manuscripts digitally is difficult because it has two
or three columns per page, which requires one to scroll up and down on each
page. Sometimes the manuscript will have
a diagram, chart, or illustration on the opposite page, making digital
following even more difficult. Then
there is the difficulty that it is easier to find ones place in a print copy
(flipping pages, underlining, etc.) as opposed to scrolling. (There
is a reason why we abandoned scrolls for books in our print copies.)
In even a
short piece of 10 or twelve pages (like the piece you now are reading), it can
be frustrating to try to locate a passage by scrolling. Some have argued that reading print is easier
on the eyes, outlining is easier, and remembering is easier with print copies
because it provides more physical landmarks and kinaesthetic clues for locating
information in the text. Also, having to
scroll down a text takes more mental effort than flipping pages, and so it takes
away from concentrating on the text.
Another
concern with completely going digital is
that there are problems with digital preservation (see Nancy M. Cline). In digital depositories, copies are
constantly being read by machines to ensure integrity of the data, to detect
and repair data corruption (there is “bit rot” corruption). “In a post-apocalyptic world, books would still
work, but not the tapes, CDs, and computers left. And, how do we preserve content as technology
changes? With changes in file formats,
will this data be usable a hundred years from now? Will those files be readable by future
generations of computers?” Already we
have lost information from the first space explorations, due to corruption of
the tapes used to store the data.
Finally,
some are now suggesting that Colleges and Public libraries no longer should use
their valuable space to “warehouse” books.
They say that libraries should go digital, depending on digital copies
of books they need from central book depositories. This might seem to put too much control over
our access to information to those who govern the central book warehouses.
In
closing, I should note that the tragedy that happened at our library is
happening all over the country. Do a
search on destruction of library books, and you easily will find that this is
becoming alarmingly common. I recently viewed a video of an art professor
at the University of New Hampshire. She
was standing in front of a huge bin behind the Main Library. She was weeping because they were filling a
dumpster with beautifully illustrated Art book, apparently to make room for
biology books, and nobody had even consulted with the faculty.
We have to put a stop to this attack on our
culture. But it will not be an easy fight. I have yet to find a librarian who does not
defend the destruction of 70% of our books as “weeding” – even when they have
no idea what was culled or what the criteria were. It seems to be a territorial thing. Of course libraries sometimes need to be
“weeded” for various reasons. But, this
should be done judiciously, and in consultation with faculty who are experts in
their disciplines. Those rules were not
followed here.
Destroying
70% of our print collection cannot sensibly be called “judicious weeding,
contrary to what Brian Greene assured me.
It was a massive destruction
of our books, and a rushed job as he admits.
It was done without keeping any record of what titles were destroyed,
done without consultation with faculty, not because the collection was too old,
but because someone wanted to get rid of those stacks of books that used to
fill our library. Someone wanted to make space for their computer labs and tutoring rooms. For Brian the Librarian to call this
“judicious weeding” is rather like calling gang rape a “Love-in.”
But, the main point of this protected disclosure is
that certain employees of YCCD did violate YCCD Policy and California Ed
Codes when they dumped all those books without getting permission from the
Governing Board. For proof of that
claim, read Exhibit A below.
Thank you for your attention. Any person who cooperates in the investigation
into this communication that Don Viss is required to conduct is protected under
YCCD Policy 7700, Whistleblower Protection.
To support Mr. Viss in his duty, we
all should relay to him any information we have regarding this complaint,
whether it supports or discredits this complaint. We all should help as we can the Chairman of our
Governing Board in this likely unpleasant duty, and insist on transparency and
honesty.
One piece of evidence that was beyond my means to
supply was a Power Point presentation that Jillian Daley made regarding the new
philosophy of libraries. It was to my
mind a very chilling confession of what we can expect from such people. It said that that the space currently
occupied by libraries is very expensive real estate, and that it should not be
wasted on “warehousing books.” It paves
the way for taking over our libraries and tossing the books so that all that expensive
space can be used for something more valuable than collections of books. Need I remind you that burners of books are never friends of the life of the mind? The fact that some of them have gone green
and recycle rather than burning our heritage does not change their
stripes.
Now, go and do the right thing.
W. J. Holly, Ph.D., Philosophy
Exhibit
A: Proof that Stearns and Smith Usurped
Authority of the Board when they acted without consent of the Board.
I
maintain that only a unanimous vote of Trustees present at a meeting can
provide authority to dump thousands of culled library books into the county
dump. The relevant statutes are
reproduced below.
Point
One: YCCD Policy 6550 (Disposal of
Surplus Property) might seem to grant that the Executive Vice Chancellor is
authorized to act as the agent of the Board to identify and dispose of all District
surplus property -- and even to determine which property is of little or no
value. HOWEVER, each of the sentences
seeming to grant this power has an attached qualifier that such power must
be consistent with the California Education Codes 81450 to 8143. And, as I demonstrate below, the Ca Ed Code
puts severe restrictions on the Executive Vice Chancellor’s powers over
district property. It does NOT allow the Executive Vice Chancellor or any other mere
employee of YCCD to treat District property as its own private property, to be
disposed of at the discretion of that employee. District property belongs to the public, and
its disposal rightly (and by
California law) is the responsibility of the Governing Board.
81450
does not seem relevant to our case.
It says that the governing board can sell for cash or auction
property that is not needed or that needs to be replaced, etc. and it makes
clear that auctions must be advertised, etc.
The main thrust of this is that the Board needs to be fair to the public
in the disposal of public properties.
And, it says nothing about an
employee being empowered to decide to auction unneeded personal property, nor
does it say that a mere employee can put surplus district property in the dump
or pass it out to ones friends.
81450.5
tells us that a district may exchange
for value, sell for cash, or donate any personal property of the
district if all these
conditions are met: (a) The property isn’t needed, needs to be replace, or is
unsatisfactory, and (b) the property is exchanged with, sold, or donated to
another school or public entity. Again
this has no relevance to our book destruction.
This section again is intended to protect the public’s interest in its
public property. It is OK for a public
school to exchange, sell, or donate surplus property to another public entity.
That would be in the taxpayer’s interest.
Nothing in this section gives a
mere employee or even the governing board the right to throw surplus property
into the trash.
81452
(a) is not relevant, as it does not allow putting surplus property in the
trash. It only tells us that such
property may be sold at a private sale without advertising. BUT, it only allows that if the governing board by unanimous vote of
all those members present finds the property is not worth more than $5,000.
81452 (b) is not relevant to our case, since it
does not permit either an employee or the board to throw surplus property into
the trash. It only says that if, after a properly advertized auction,
where no bid was received, then it can be sold at a private sale (by an
employee empowered by the Board to hold such a sale).
81452
(c) does tell us when surplus property may be donated to a charitable organization deemed appropriate by the
board, or disposed of in the local
public dump. But notice the strict
condition necessary for donation or for disposing in the public dump: This can happen only if the board, by
unanimous vote of the members present finds that the property is of
insufficient value to defray the costs of arranging a sale. (I suppose that it would be nitpicking to
point out that even this section does not allow the board to recycle surplus property.)
In conclusion, given
that the governing board did not by unanimous (or any other kind of vote)
authorize the mass destruction of our library books – given that were not even informed until after the event – it seems
clear that Smith, Stearns, and Daly did unlawfully usurp the authority of the
Governing Board, and that therefore they did violate California law when they
ordered the destruction of thousands of dollars worth of District
property. I submit that this makes them
all guilty of felony theft and perhaps felony vandalism.
It
seems to me that Smith and Stearns also have run afoul of Ed code 70902 (b)(7). The Governing Board is supposed to Establish
procedures that ensure faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to
express their opinions at the campus level, to ensure that these opinions are
given every reasonable consideration, to ensure the right to participate effectively
in district and college governance, and to ensure the right of academic
senates to assume primary responsibility for making recommendations in the
areas of curriculum and academic standards.
When Smith and
Stearns decided unilaterally, without consulting with either the faculty,
students, or even the Governing Board on such an important matter as destroying
70% of our Library, they were denying them voice and reasonable consideration
in college governance. This is not
transparency. This is not “engaging all
voices.” This is unrestrained power, not
shared governance.
YCCD Policy 6550 Disposal of Surplus Property
Disposal of surplus
supplies/equipment will be accomplished by the following: Trade-in on new purchases; surplus bid sales; an auction open
to the general public. The Executive Vice Chancellor is authorized to act as the agent of the Board
to identify and dispose of all District surplus property, consistent with
applicable Code provisions. If the Executive Vice Chancellor determines the
property is of little or no value, then
he/she may dispose of the property consistent with California Education
Codes 81452-81453. References:
Education Code 70902(b)(6), 81542 and 81450 et seq. Adopted: June 28, 2004 18 Revision Adopted: February
11, 2009
EDUCATION
CODE
SECTION 81450-81460
SECTION 81450-81460
81450. (a) The governing
board of any community college district
may sell for cash any personal property belonging to the district
if
the property is not required for school purposes, or if it should
be
disposed of for the purpose of replacement, or if it is
unsatisfactory or not suitable for school use. There shall be no
sale
until notice has been given by posting in at least three public
places in the district for not less than two weeks, or by
publication
for at least once a week for a period of not less than two weeks
in
a newspaper published in the district and having a general
circulation there… The board shall sell the property to the
highest
responsible bidder or reject all bids.
(b) The governing board
may choose to conduct any sale of personal
property authorized under this section by means of a public
auction
conducted by employees of the district or other public agencies,
or
by contract with a private auction firm. The board may delegate to
the district employee responsible for conducting the auction the
authority to transfer the personal property to the highest
responsible bidder upon completion of the auction and after
payment
has been received by the district.
81450.5. Notwithstanding
Sections 81450 and 81452, a community
college district may, without providing the notice required by
Section 81450, exchange for value, sell for cash, or donate
any
personal property belonging to the district if all of the
following
criteria are met:
(a) The district
determines that the property is not required for
school purposes, that it should be disposed of for the purpose of
replacement, or that it is unsatisfactory or not suitable for
school
use.
(b) The property is
exchanged with, or sold or donated to, a
school district, community college district, or other public
entity
that has had an opportunity to examine the property proposed to be
exchanged, sold, or donated.
(c) The receipt of the
property by a school district or community
college district would not be inconsistent with any applicable
districtwide or schoolsite technology plan of the recipient
district.
81452. (a) If the
governing board, by a unanimous vote of those
members present, finds that the property, whether one or more
items,
does not exceed in value the sum of five thousand dollars
($5,000),
the property may be sold at private sale without advertising, by any
employee of the district empowered for that purpose by the board.
(b) Any item or items of
property having previously been offered
for sale pursuant to Section 81450, but for which no qualified bid
was received, may be sold at private sale without advertising by any
employee of the district empowered for that purpose by the board.
(c) If the board, by a
unanimous vote of those members present,
finds that the property is of insufficient value to defray the
costs
of arranging a sale, the property may be donated to a charitable
organization deemed appropriate by the board, or it may be
disposed
of in the local public dump
on order of any employee of the district
empowered for that purpose by the board.
Californian Ed. Code 70902:
70902. (a) (1) Every community college district shall be under the
control of a board of trustees, which is referred to herein as the
"governing board." The governing board of each community college
district shall establish, maintain, operate, and govern one or more
community colleges in accordance with law …
(b) In furtherance of subdivision (a), the governing board of each
community college district shall do all of the following: …
(7) Establish procedures that are consistent with minimum
standards established by the board of governors to ensure faculty,
staff, and students the opportunity to express their opinions at the
campus level, to ensure that these opinions are given every
reasonable consideration, to ensure the right to participate
effectively in district and college governance, and to ensure the
right of academic senates to assume primary responsibility for making
recommendations in the areas of curriculum and academic standards.
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