Gift article link here (originally found on Threads).

This article (Harris, 2024) is about the continuing censorship war in U.S. libraries. Apparently, in some cases, public officials are using/abusing the standard weeding process to quietly get rid of books that have different perspectives (e.g. on race, sexual preference or gender issues), rather than going through the more difficult and public official process.

It’s interesting to see the weeding process described for the general public, including the classic weeding acronym MUSTIE: “Misleading, Ugly (damaged or worn out), Superseded (by a newer edition), Trivial, Irrelevant (to the community) and Elsewhere (meaning the material could easily be found someplace else)” (para. 10).*

I take my hat off to U.S. librarians fighting for freedom of information. It’s intense.

* MUSTIE originated as MUSTY, coined in 1976 by the American Library Association with the Texas State Library (Spedding, 2010). Weisburg (2016) notes that it morphed into MUSTIE in 1995, in Boon’s The CREW Method – updated pdf available here (Larson, 2012).

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References

Boon, B. (1995). The CREW method: Expanded guidelines for collection evaluation and weeding for small and medium-sized public libraries. Texas State Library.

Harris, E. A. (2024, October 8). Removing books from libraries often takes debate. But there’s a quieter way. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/books/book-ban-library-weeding.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Qk4.ple_._y8euXT3BIEg

Larson, J. (2012). CREW: A weeding manual for modern libraries. Texas State Library and Archives Commission. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/ld/ld/pubs/crew/crewmethod12.pdf

Spedding, P. (2010, February 12). MUSTY (not). Patrick Spedding. https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2010/02/musty-not.html#:~:text=M.U.S.T.Y.,Superseded%2C%20Trivial%2C%20Your%20collection.

Weisburg, H. K. (2016, August 15). On libraries: Weeding and leading. Hilda K. Wiesburg. https://hildakweisburg.com/2016/08/15/on-libraries-weeding-and-leading/

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• Images are used on this blog post under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968.
• Screenshot of article on my phone.
• Mobile phone border and background from Canva.