this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
284 points (96.7% liked)

politics

19120 readers
2639 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] orclev@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, libraries have limited shelf space so their inventory is at least partially driven by demand. They generally try to keep a mix of popular and scholarly works on hand. I can guarantee that if you're looking for a particular book and they don't have it that they can order it for you, it just might take a little while to be shipped from one of the locations that actually has a copy.

[–] Hello_there@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Libraries by me have plenty of shelves but not enough on the shelves. They wind up selling used books to try to make money for the library.
It's disappointing to go to a library and not see shelves filled and filled with books

[–] bibliotectress@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I work in a library, and we're actually doing that on purpose. It turns out that circulation improves significantly if you weed out the copies that look dated and old. When people come to browse for books (not diehard readers, but more casual readers), they have a hard time finding books that peak their interest when they're surrounded by "junk," so they just don't get anything. It took me a bit to get used to, but I can't argue with the results. We've heavily weeded, got updated covers of classics, and keep up with current popular books, and they're flying off the shelves. As much as we say, "Don't judge a book by its cover," it's something most people do.

[–] Hello_there@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, ok, but it sucks when the scifi section is one half of an aisle, and each shelf is only half full. I'm sure I could order it and have it show up later but thats inconvenient

[–] bibliotectress@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is your library genrefied?? But yeah it may just be an oversight on whoever orders books because they aren't familiar with the genre, and people who want to read scifi probably aren't requesting. I have to watch for that on biographies when I'm ordering because I don't personally read them, so I'm not as focused on buying new ones. For us, the most popular scifi books are also dystopian, but the hard scifi doesn't get any circulation.

Andy Weir is doing great things for the genre right now, which I think will help in the future! He writes in a very accessible, conversational, fun way that is engaging the general population with scifi. People who saw The Martian are reading Project Hail Mary and loving it! I'm excited to see what happens next!

Edit: I realized you may be talking about book store shelves instead. 🤦‍♀️

[–] Hello_there@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

No - there's an inter library loan system so you can order a book and have it show up a bit later for you to check out. But kind of hard to do that if I don't know what I want to read.