How College Became a Ruthless Competition Divorced From Learning

 

Daniel Markovitz "How College Became a Ruthless Competition Divorced From Learning", Atlantic, May 6, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/marriage-college-status-meritocracy/618795/

Changes in the weightings so tiny that they are obviously arbitrary make material differences in the rankings. In this year’s law-school report, U.S. News issued multiple corrections—for example, eliminating a 0.25 percent weight for the “credit-bearing hours of instruction provided by law librarians to full-time equivalent law students” (whatever that is) and increasing the weighting of the bar-passage rate by 0.25 percent. These maneuvers altered the rank of 35 law schools, including nine in the top 30.

COMMENT

     This article about the fierce competition to get into elite colleges cites library instruction as a particularly absurd measure of excellence.   Apparently, law students are no longer expected to know how to do their research. 

Mary Ellen Moylan, Acclaimed Balanchine Dancer, Is Dead at 94

 Roslyn Sulcas "Mary Ellen Moylan, Acclaimed  Balanchine Dancer, Is Dead at 94" New York Times April 14, 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/arts/dance/mary-ellen-moylan-dead.html?auth=login-google 

Ms. Moylan had become “the first great Balanchine dancer." And yet her death, almost a year ago, went largely unnoticed in the dance world. Even a collection devoted to her in the archives of the University of Oklahoma School of Dance makes no mention of her death; neither do various biographical sketches of her online. Word of her death, however, began to trickle out through social media, and her daughter-in-law, Carol Bailes, recently confirmed it: Ms. Moyland died on April 28, 2020, in Redmond, Wash. She was 94. The family said she had had dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

COMMENT

An obituary of an influential dancer is also a commentary on the importance of journalism.  When Moyland died nobody reported it.  The library archive, dependent on published sources, had no record of her death.  In an age when journalism is in danger, so is the historical record held by libraries. 

At Long Last, He Really Could Kiss the Bride

 Tammy La Gorce, "At Long Last, He Really Could Kiss the Bride," [Vows] New York Times, April 1, 2021 p. ST13.

He was so comfortable in her company that, as the night wore on and she started falling asleep across the table from him -- McDonald's was the local destination for studying after the school library closed at midnight -- his playful side emerged.  "I started drawing on her chin with  a marker," he said. "That's not something I would have done with anybody but her.  It was like we were already best friends."

COMMENT

When the library as Place of Refuge at Stephen F. Austin State University shuts down at midnight, a couple who are interested in each other more to a late-night fast food restaurant.  At the restaurant, studying begins to transform into something more physical.  Librarians know that people make out at the library, but here there is a clear implication that the McDonalds seem  less safe than a place where study space is the explicit agenda.

Attacked by a 'Superspreader' of Online Smears

Kashmir Hill, "Attacked by a 'Superspreader' of Online Smears," New York Times, January 31,  2021 p. A1 -.

     The next year, Mr. Caplan hired a private investigator to trail Ms. Atas, because she refused to say where she lived or how she accessed the internet.  Mr. Caplan wanted that information in order to obtain evidence for his lawsuit.
    One evening in June 2018, the investigator followed Ms. Atas as she left court got on a subway and then boarded a bus.  

     At 7:30p.m., Ms, Atas entered a pubic library at the University of Toronto.  she spent the next few hours at a computer, according to the investigator's written report and photos that he took surreptitiously  Then she rode a bus to a homeless shelter.  (Ms. Atas denied that she stayed in the shelter.)
     In response to subpoenas, Pinterest, Facebook and WordPress, the blogging site, had provided Mr. Caplan with metadata about the abusive posts.  Some had originated from computer at the University of Toronto. Suddenly that made sense.

COMMENT

In this story a disgruntled ex employee uses public library computers to harass people online.  The story describes the difficulty of tracking and stopping internet trolls.  The attacker was using anonymous public computers to cover her tracks and was only caught by a private investigator.

Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020

Emily Badger. Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020.  What did we Learn? New York Times, December 29, 2020. B3.

Americans also stopped broadly sharing libraries, movie theaters, train stations and public school classrooms, the spaces that sill created common experience in increasingly unequal communities. Even the D.M.S., with its cross-section of life in a single room, wasn't that any more. 

 COMMENT

     Libraries are a place where people from different socio-economic classes can mingle on an equal basis. The article describes how COVID has shut down such interactions so that some people are in a privileged bubble while others are doing low-paid, insecure work to deliver goods and services to the privileged.

When 'Back to School' Means a Parking Lot and the Hunt for a WiFi Signal

Petula Dvorak, "When ‘back to school’ means a parking lot and the hunt for a WiFi signal". Washington Post, August 27, 2020. [online]

Kids are gathering in the parking lots outside schools, county libraries, McDonald’s and Starbucks.

From the hill and holler of rural America to urban cityscapes, this is the new back-to-school scene for some of about 12 million kids who don’t have the broadband Internet power to get to virtual class, now that the pandemic has shut down most in-person schools.

...

Schools are trying. North Carolina is fitting idle school buses with power hotspots and dispatching them to parking lots kids can get to. A doctor in Greenup, Ky., offered the parking lot outside her medical office to students who need broadband access. Libraries are inviting students to crib off their signals.

COMMENT

    Before the pandemic, articles portrayed  going to the library as a second-rate option for home internet.  With the pandemic, you can't even sit in the library-- you have to get the signal out in the parking lot.  The root of he problem is, instead of treating internet like a utility, it has been privatized.  All of a sudden, an unstable wifi hotspot that used to be good enough can't handle all-day zooming and kids can't go to school. 

   

 

The Needy Will Face Obstacles to Getting Stimulus Payments

Ron Lieber and Alan Rappeport, "The Needy Will Face Obstacles to Getting Stimulus Payments," New York Times, April 3, 2020, B6

     Filing even the simplest of returns could pose challenges during a pandemic.  The I.R.S. does have a free filing site, but those who lack internet access could be unable to use it because nonprofits, libraries and other places are closed. 

COMMENT

     People with no internet or devices are dependent on shared public equipment.  That means they need to go to the library in order to file a tax return.  When libraries are closed, there is no place to file online or even to print out paper tax forms.   COVID 19 has brought the digital divide into stark focus since people who have not filed tax returns will also need to file online to get COVID relief checks.  With libraries closed, where will they do that?
 
    The situation has raised the call for internet as a public utility, but that still wouldn't assure access for everyone.  There still needs to be a public option for internet connections and working devices, and that has mainly turned out to be libraries.

Locked Out of the Virtual Classroom

New York Times Editorial Board, Locked Out of the Virtual Classroom, New York Times, March 27, 2020. Online.

     Jessica Rosenworcel, a Federal Communications Commission member who has been proselytizing on this issue for several years, has rightly called on the F.C.C. to use funds earmarked for connecting schools and libraries to the internet to provide schools with internet hot spots that could be lent to students.
…
     Commissioner Rosenworcel’s access plan focuses on expanding the federal program known as E-Rate, which helps qualifying schools, school systems and libraries acquire broadband at up to a 90 percent discount. E-Rate program funding is based on demand, up to an annual F.C.C.-established cap of $4.15 billion. It would be a simple matter for the commission to extend the program so that schools can buy hot spots that are then distributed to needy students.
     But given the dire need in poor and rural communities, it would also be right to leverage E-Rate — or something like it — to bring permanent broadband into homes for millions of internet-deprived schoolchildren and subsistence workers.

COMMENT

     Schools and libraries are trying to compensate for a digital divide that means some people have fast Internet access and some don't.  They aren't getting much support, possibly because they seem to be a stopgap when the real goal is to get everyone fast internet access from home.  

     Internet would help people get connected since smartphones seem ubiquitous.  However,  the barrier isn't just the Internet connection-- it's also having a device to do homework on, and maybe a printer.  At my house three people share one laptop.  We don't own a printer because we used to be able to go to the library when we needed to print.  Electronic devices become obsolete very, very quickly.  An additional burden on people too poor for Internet is, how will they continue to upgrade their devices?   The global trend seems to be that the ubiquitous computer is a smartphone.  Will poor students end up trying to write term papers on their phones?

     

An Excavated Voice Never Leaves Her

Alexandra Alter, "An Excavated Voice Never Leaves Her," New York Times, March 8, 2020, p. AR18.

     Hilary Mantel has a recurring anxiety dream that takes place in a library.  She finds a book with some scrap of historical information she's been seeking, but when she tries to read it, the words disintegrate before her eyes.
     "And then when you wake up," she said,  "you've got the rhythm of a sentence in your head, but you don't know what the sentence was."

Comment 

     Here's a new twist on the extreme research story.  The nightmare involves finding the exact information  needed and then not being able to read or remember it.   It's the joy of research inverted, 

American Dirt is Proof that the Publishing Industry is Broken

David Bowles, "American Dirt is Proof that the Publishing Industry is Broken, New York Times,  January 27, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/opinion/american-dirt-book.html

     The white saviorism is tough for me to swallow, and not just because I’m a Chicano writer critical of “American Dirt.” My hometown library was chosen in late 2019 to be part of a pilot partnership between Oprah’s Book Club, the American Library Association and local library book groups. The libraries would receive several boxes of books to use with patrons in their book club, as well as other discussion and promotional materials. 

     Last week I was in touch with Kate Horan, the director of the McAllen Public Library here, via phone and email. She told me she felt “excited and honored” by the news, “proud that our library on the border with Mexico was recognized and selected to be part of a new initiative.”

     No one at the library knew which book had been selected: Ms. Winfrey keeps titles a tightly guarded secret. But Ms. Horan was told that it would be “the most talked about book of the year.” Instructions were given: Upon arrival of the shipment, the library should film an “unboxing” video and submit it to Ms. Winfrey.

     The boxes arrived on Jan. 17. Upon opening them, Ms. Horan said, her “heart sank,” and she immediately recoiled at this “deliberate assumption that libraries on the border, who were selected to receive the books, would be automatic endorsers, given the subject matter.”

     She sent the unboxing video off, and after two agonizing days consulting with her predominantly Latinx staff and others, she decided to send the books back, and politely declined to participate in the pilot program.

COMMENT

   This is a sticky issue and not as simple as the op-ed writer wants it to be. Accusations of "cultural appropriation" seem to me to be a red herring.  The real problem with the "American Dirt"  seems to be that it has been heavily marketed as your next book club read yet according to to the critics (who all dutifully reviewed it), it's not actually very well researched or written.

    In many of the library stories I've collected on this blog, readers describe a transformative experience of finding people like themselves in the pages of library books.  It's a reasonable guess that people in the U.S. borderlands might enjoy reading a novel located there. At the same time, I remember hearing a librarian complain that when she gathered books for imprisoned black men people would donate "Black Like Me," which is actually an autobiography about a white man traveling through the South in blackface, albeit with an intention for the reader to develop empathy for "the other."   The publishers who promoted "American Dirt" similarly thought the novel might promote white empathy by focusing on a Mexican woman who is a lot like a middle class white American woman. The virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the Trump administration  suggests that now might be the right moment for such a novel.    Positive reviews on Amazon.com indicate that it might even be successful in generating empathy for migrants.  

     Should the librarian have sent the books back?  I assume that the library does offer "American Dirt" for anyone who wants to borrow it.  It's certainly not censorship to pick a different book for a book club.  I agree with the op-ed, though, that the misstep reveals a big problem with centralized book publishing and library acquisitions.  The publisher's marketing division, Oprah's Book Club and ALA missed the mark largely because nobody working there stopped to think that Latinx readers were never the target audience for this book. In fact, it seems unlikely that Oprah (a Black woman originally from Mississippi) is ever going to develop a reading list that is particularly sensitive to U.S. borderlands readers.  The reaction of Latinx library staff suggest that they would really love to have a book club that highlights their own region, featuring  people and situations that are more like their own experience instead of getting stereotyped by someone far away.  That's exactly why libraries need to pick their own books instead of outsourcing those decisions.

I've actually written an article about this:  "Re-Localizing the Library: Considerations for the Anthropocene. 
  

   

Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It

Peter Wehner, “Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It” New York Times, December 8, 2019, p. SR3.

Sohrab Ahmari— a convert to Catholicism who is both the op-ed editor of The New York Post and a contributor to the religious magazine First Things— was so outraged that drag queens were reading stories to children at a library in Sacramento that he has relegated civility to a secondary virtue while turning against modernity and classical liberalism “To hell with liberal order,” as Mr. Ahmari put it. “Sometimes reactionary politics are the only salutary path.”

COMMENT

     Judging by the political behavior of Trumpist Christians, you’d think that enforcing stereotypical gender roles was a foundational principle of Christian religion. Mr. Wehner suggests that such prejudice is, in fact, contrary to a practice of spirituality, joy, gratitude, kindness and healing grace.

    As a target of self-appointed morality police the library takes on two roles that appear in other library stories: 1) a target of censorship 2)  a defender of free speech and diversity.

Amazon's Expansive, Creeping Influence in an American City

Scott Shane, "Amazon's Expansive, Creeping Influence in an American City," New York Times, December 1, 2019, p.1, 26-28.

Public libraries are stocked with digital audiobooks from Amazon's Audible, and browsers can check reviews on Amazon's Goodreads.

COMMENT

     In this article about the Kraken-like tentacles of Amazon.com libraries feature in the role of customers.  When libraries lend audio books, Amazon skims a little off the top.  Instead of turning to librarians for book recommendations, readers can plow through crowdsourced reviews on Goodreads (which are a lot less useful than you'd think with regard to finding something good to read).
     Libraries are a keystone of  literary culture.  They support books and reading by buying stuff, putting money back into writing and publishing. Yet in the world of librarianship there has not been much acknowledgement of this role. Instead, there is a tendency to prioritize efficiency and cheapness.  During the transition to online newspapers, librarians never asked the question of how journalists would get paid.  Likewise, librarians have cut down on purchasing books from university presses without ever asking how young professors will get tenure if there is no place for them to publish books.
     Librarians like to point to libraries as core institutions for community resilience and civic engagement.  Yet abandoning newspapers and academic presses for the sake of "cheapness" was not socially responsible.  It's probably not socially responsible for libraries to switch procurement to Amazon.com either, particularly since prioritizing convenience and cheapness are exactly what lured librarians to make bad decisions in the past.
     Somebody (ALA?) should take a hard look at library spending in order to understand exactly who and what it's supporting. The long and short is, Big Tech distributes information but does not create it.  Amazon.com is the new Wal*Mart, vacuuming up dollars and sucking the life out of communities.  Only now it's happening to cities and not vulnerable small towns.   The article ends with Emma Snyder, the owner of an independent bookstore who says that her customers will pay $10 more for a book just because they don't like the world Amazon is building:  "Part of what people don't like is that Amazon debases the value of things.  We're commercial spaces, but we fundamentally exist to feed and nurture people's souls."  What if libraries applied this idea to spending?  Is there a way to re-focus collection development on building strong communities, not just on getting cheaper best-sellers?

Better Buses Better Cities

Steven Higashide, Better Buses Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit (2019).

Agencies have to do better than "open houses" that draw eight people at the library and instead think seriously about how to get public input that equitably represents bus riders and activates allies throughout the planning process. They have to discard ponderous project development  processes that result in 5-year timelines for bus lane projects and try tactical approaches that change streets overnight instead.

COMMENT

Library open houses are portrayed here as an ineffective way to gather citizen input for transit improvements.  Many transit riders can't come either because such meetings conflict with work, of the bus stops running at night.   In order to get stakeholder input, it's essential to try to get a representative sample, not just respond to a few people who manage to show up in person. 

In the Land of Self Defeat

Monica Potts, "In the Land of Self Defeat,"  New York Times, October 4, 2019.

The fight over the pay for the new head librarian had a larger context: The library moved into a new building, with new services, in 2016. Construction began during the natural gas boom years, and ended after the bust, just as the county budget was being squeezed and services were being cut. During the boom, the new building had seemed necessary, but with the revenue decreases, the county knew it was going to have a hard time paying the 2.1 million still owed on it. (Disclosure: My mother was on the library board when some of the decisions about the new building were made.) The library made its own budget cuts, but the savings weren’t enough to cover the shortfall in paying for the building, and there was a real danger of the library closing, leaving its new, hulking brick building empty. The people who didn’t frequent the library argued that the community didn’t really need it anymore, anyway. After all, if you have internet, you can get whatever you want in a day. 

COMMENT

In this article the public library serves as a synecdoche for community that is undermined by anti-tax zealotry.  The author writes that anti-tax Trump voters "view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain, even if it ultimately helps them, too."  She notes that people who would like to live in a place with better schools and good public libraries have already moved away leaving behind a group of people wedded to an ideology of self-defeat since without community services to fall back on all of them are much poorer.

The library building was built with boom-and-bust resource extraction money.  It's typical that a community would overspend, expecting the boom to go on forever.  It never does.  Politicians like to pretend that fossil fuel extraction is economic development.  In fact, extractive industries is a good way for rich people to make money specifically because it employs relatively few people and isn't permanent in a community and therefore doesn't have to worry about long-term community relationships.  They always go bust in the end and always seem to leave behind damage to the environment and economy.

Life Goes On

Thessaly La Force, "Life Goes On" (Notes on the Culture), T: The New York Time Style Magazine, August 18, 2019 p. 98-

     Unbeknownst to [Judy] Chicago, Mary Ross Taylor, one of the administrators who then ran Chicago’s feminist nonprofit, Through the Flower, which had raised funds for the work’s completion and later it’s resuscitated tour, wrote to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art asking if it would be interested in acquiring the research material relating to the piece ["The Dinner Party"].  They declined, finding the material of no interest. Today, Chicago’s archives are stored across three libraries: the Schlesinger Library of the History of Women in America, which is part of Harvard University; the National Museum of Women in the Arts; and Penn State University.  She is also working with these institutions to build a digital portal of her complete oeuvre, which she plans to unveil later this year.

COMMENT

     It always makes a good story when a library turns down material that turns out to be historically important.

Work Friend

Megan Greenwell, “Work Friend: A Closed Mind Amid Open Books,” New York Times, August 11, 2019, p. BU3.

The library recently hired a new children’s department head who has told me that she doesn’t believe in evolution and doesn’t think public schools are good and that “Mexicans don’t read.” She talks about religion constantly and has added several creationist “science” books and DVDs to our library collection.

COMMENT

     This library problem comes from the work-related advice column. The library profession generates “vocational awe” but some librarians are nonetheless incompetent.  Other library stories relate encounters with racist librarians and it’s clear that a librarian with this kind of attitude has potential to cause actual harm.  It's especially hard to get rid of people who have been given administrative positions.  No matter how bad they are, administrators somehow make themselves immune from accountability.

     A professional standard of neutrality is meant to keep personal bias from bubbling to the surface, but it can’t stop someone who won’t accept the standard.  I once got into a debate at a library conference with a librarian who wanted to preach anti-abortion from the reference desk. My point of view is that the best way to approach controversial topics is to get students to identify the stakeholders— the right answer is not to take sides but to encourage patrons to determine who cares about the issue and why. This librarian wanted to use the platform of the reference desk to “guide” patrons towards her own preferred political position. In any case, stocking the shelves with science-denial is not objectivity but just false equivalency.  There are not two sides when one side is simply wrong.   Academic libraries might have creationist propaganda for research reasons, but even so it's problematic because cataloging rules can make fake information look legitimate.  If we want to combat ignorance librarians shouldn’t be spreading fake news, even if there are people out there who want to read it. 

Prescribed Reading

Abigail Zuger, "Prescribed Reading: A Doctor's Guide to Books," New York Times Book Review, May 12, 2019, p. 11. 

     Experts have been tackling the worldwide resurgence of measles for decades no, and it was only a matter of time before the scattershot outbreaks of years past turned into the year's newsworthy explosions.
     Readers curious about this infection rising phoenix like for its own ashes will find both less and more in the library than they may want.  Aside from a few textbooks an pamphlets, I couldn't find a whole book devoted to measles-- not since the 10th century A. D., the is, when the Persian physician Al-Razi write "The Smallpox and Measles" to differentiate the two.

COMMENT

     The passage comes from a bibliographic essay about vaccinations. The author assumes that you would probably not need to buy your own collection of such books, so naturally you'd look for them in a library collection.

     The problem is, it's not a straightforward reference question.  Looking up the word "measles" turns up medical information that is radically out-of-date and unhelpful.  You could look online, but then you'd find medical sites, not a history of the disease or the development of vaccinations against it.  Worse, the Internet is a prime source of misleading anti-vax propaganda that is responsible for recent measles outbreaks in the first place.  If anti-vexers had started with better information research strategies, they might have made better medical decisions.

     These research pitfalls are familiar to reference librarians.  Biased websites, fake news, ads masquerading as "news," websites that are too specific with no context -- some medical libraries have set up websites to try to point people towards relatively more reliable medical information online.  But in this instance seems like the library is not much better with its one historic reference.  The author does what any good reference librarian would do and tries different vocabulary, re-focusing on the question of vaccination rather than the etiology of the disease. A spate of recent popular science books turn up, which tell a compelling tale of medical history although at least one has "some real bloopers" as far as medical science.  The author comments, "that's why some wise educator long ago created textbooks."

   

Shelf Life

Meryl Gordon, "Shelf Life: The Story of One of the Rarest Books in the World." New York Times Book Review, May 5, 2019, p.18.

     The Gutenberg Bible, purchased n 1950, was the jewel of her collection which she left to St. John's Seminary upon her death in 1958.
     In her bequest, she insisted the nothing be sold for 25 years, in the belief that future librarians should have flexibility but would keep the collection intact.  It was a tragic mistake.  The Los Angeles Archdiocese, unable to resist monetizing the valuable assets, put the entire Doheny book collection on sale in 1987.  The Maruzen Co. Ltd of Tokyo snapped up the Gutenberg for $4.4 million.  It is now the property of Keio University, where it has been digitized and locked away from public view. 

 COMMENT

    The quote comes from a book review about a biography of a rare Gutenberg Bible[1]. The collector, as in other library stories, [2] imagines that her rare book collection has enough value to be guarded intact by librarians.  In fact, the librarians sell the collection for money.

     What's most interesting to me is the comment that the digitized book is "locked away."  Librarians like to imagine that digitization makes rare and valuable things more available, not less available.  But an online picture of a Gutenberg Bible is not really the same thing as a Gutenberg Bible even though the text is the same. The spooky sense of history is lost in the format transition.

[1] Margaret Leslie Davis, The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey, Tarcher Perigee, 2019. 
[2] Can't. Just. Stop. 

400-Year-Old Stolen Bible is Recovered

"400-Year-Old Stolen Bible is Recovered," (Odd News), Salt Lake Tribune, April 26, 2019, p. A2.

A 17th Century Geneva Bible, one of the hundreds of rare books authorities said were stolen from a Pittsburgh library as part of a 20-year-long theft scheme, is back home... It was among more than 300 rare books, maps, plate books, atlases and more that were discovered missing from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh last year. 

  COMMENT

     This is from the "Odd News" section culled from some unidentified sources outside of the Salt Lake Tribune newsroom.  There is no information about the 20-year-long theft scheme or why it took so long for librarians to discover that the items were missing or whether any of the other stolen books were ever found. 

     Is it odd that someone stole rare books from the library?[1]  That it took 20 years to catch the perpetrator? Or odd that one of the books was eventually found?  In fact, library rare book rooms seem to hold a special allure for thieves.  Perhaps the fact that people are allowed to handle rare and valuable objects in the "book museum" makes it seem like nobody is minding the store. 

[1] Other blog posts about theft.

     

There's Nazi Loot on the Shelves, Too.

Milton Esterow. There's Nazi Loot on the Shelves, Too: Art Gets More Attention, but Millions of Stolen Books Have Yet to be Returned. New York Times,  Jan. 15, 2019, C1, 3.

    "People have looked away for so long," said Anders Rydell, author of "The Book Theives: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance," "but I don't think they can any more."
...

     In the last 10 years, for example, libraries in Germany and Austria have returned about 30,0000 books to 600 owners, heirs and institutions, according to researchers.

..... 

     Ms. Grimsted's work in tracking the lost volumes has advanced considerably since 1990, when she discovered 10 lists of items looted from libraries in France by the Einsatzastab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a task force headed by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.  The task force plundered more than 6,000 libraries and archives all over Europe but left behind detailed recoreds that have proved invaluable in tracing what was stolen.
...
     The Nazi targets were mainly the families, libraries and institutions of Jews but also included the Masons, Catholics, Communists, Socialists, Slavs and critics of the Nazi regime. Though libraries were destroyed and some books were burned by the Nazis early on, they later came to transfer many of the worlds to libraries and to the Institute for  Study of the Jewish Question, which was established by the task force in Frankfurt in 1941.
     "They hoped to utilize the books after the war was won to study their enemies and their culture so as to protect future Nazis from the Jews who were their enemies," Ms. Grimsted said. 

COMMENT

    Everyone associates Nazis with art-theft and book burning, so it's a bit surprising to learn that they were also building libraries of stolen books, albeit with nefarious purpose.  The intent to weaponize cultural information is a truly dark side of diverse collections.  In other library anecdotes, collection diversity is is a purely good thing, essential for library patrons seeking self-knowledge and a sense of identity.

    It's not entirely clear from the article whether the primary value of returning the stolen books lies in their rarity, their information content, or in symbolic restorative justice.   According to researcher Patricia Grimsted,  Nazis looted the books specifically because of the way the information represented the specific communities they came from.  One of the books returned to heirs is described as "an important 16th century volume," but another is a "children's activity book."  Whatever their monetary value, it's clear that both books had deep value to the people who received them.

   So it seems that the sense of identity is still represented in the looted collections, even when they represent identities lost to war and genocide.  There is a conundrum that the libraries should have copies of these works, but at the same time, the way these particular copies came into the library collections is monstrous and unacceptable.  The article does not say if there is any effort for libraries to purchase replacement copies of the returned books.  However, it seems like after the books are returned, building collections to tell the history of those Jews, Masons, Catholics, Communists, Slavs and political activists would be another form of restorative justice.