Books, what are they good for? Black History books discarded by Highland Park Schools

**Russix** · July-09-13, 07:43 AM

Nothing?
http://www.freep.com/article/20130708/NEWS02/307080052/

**RaumVogel** · July-09-13, 07:57 AM

Good for the protesters. Public schools don't seem to want children to learn much history these days.

**Honky Tonk** · July-09-13, 08:00 AM

Originally Posted by Russix

Nothing?
http://www.freep.com/article/20130708/NEWS02/307080052/

I find this VERY disturbing.

**Baselinepunk** · July-09-13, 08:25 AM

I would like to see the inventory of what was thrown out to see if the claims of high historic / intrinsic value are in fact true before I get all lathered up over this.

At face; we see another FAIL of the EM model -- a model that only cares about bondholders and ratings; while the true clients they should be servicing go under served.

Further, is this school another one of those shit charter schools? If so; that would say a lot as well.

**sumas** · July-09-13, 10:46 AM

Well, must say, anyone approving of ditching books must be a little lacking in culture. Then to insult charter schools????

Whats the message, no school, no culture for inner city kids? You are serious lame!

**noise** · July-09-13, 11:00 AM

Originally Posted by sumas

Well, must say, anyone approving of ditching books must be a little lacking in culture. Then to insult charter schools????

Whats the message, no school, no culture for inner city kids? You are serious lame!

Libraries quite regularly ditch books.

**sumas** · July-09-13, 11:17 AM

Actually, they sell them. Duh!

**noise** · July-09-13, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by sumas

Actually, they sell them. Duh!

Sometimes. Other times they're discarded.

**Toka313** · July-09-13, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by noise

Libraries quite regularly ditch books.

They don't regularly ditch a statewide renowned collection of particular value.

They don't toss things in a dumpster without first seeing if anybody wants the items.

**noise** · July-09-13, 12:58 PM

Originally Posted by Toka313

They don't regularly ditch a statewide renowned collection of particular value.

They don't toss things in a dumpster without first seeing if anybody wants the items.

To the first point, usually not. But that's not what was being discussed.

Is this collection truly renowned?

To the second point, usually not. But sometimes they do. I've seen it at the 5 libraries, across the country, in which I've worked.

**gazhekwe** · July-09-13, 01:29 PM

I can't figure out how throwing out something that cost probably quite a bit of money to assemble is viewed as a savings. Costs too much to house the collection? Well for Pete's sake, donate it to WCCC, or put it up for sale and make a little of that money back.

Heck, here we have Mr. Orr wanting to sell off all kinds of historic collections and art, why is the HP EM so out of touch?

**SWMAP** · July-09-13, 01:53 PM

Since most people aren't going to get their information from books any more, housing, cleaning, dehumidifying, de-bugging books - all costs of keeping paper books - won't be priorities for libraries.

I also have questions about the value of the collection. I recently saw a professional report on the value of a well-known Detroit collection about a famous person that will be nameless. Aside from a very few pieces of value to an ebay collector, most pieces, especially the books and ephemera, were considered to be in "poor condition" due to use, with dog-eared corners, brittle paper, torn bindings, etc.

The "valuable" collection turned out to be mostly sentimental and valueless, not worth the space being rented.

It is highly unlikely that books stored in a school and used by school-children are in good enough condition to even sell on Ebay for very much.

I love books, but I am pretty much tossing them now. Even cookbooks and food writing are more available, better catalogued and more enticing online. As for the rest – have you seen the sagging bookshelves at your local Salvation Army? I’m certain that what’s on those shelves gets tossed often.
I imagine that the HP protest is much more about the arrogance of an EM rather than about some tattered books.

**Johnnny5** · July-09-13, 02:14 PM

I frequently attend school surplus auctions and have always been amazed by how poorly DPS and Highland Park handle their surplus items. They rarely bother to auction off most of their surplus, instead it remains in empty schools to be destroyed or stolen, fills dumpsters or falls into the hands of those with connections. It's really a shame because many of these items have significant value and that money could be put to good use. That being said, most books receive very little interest at these auctions. I have seen entire high school libraries sell for a few hundred dollars and more often than not the shelves they are sitting on sell for far more than the books themselves.

**Honky Tonk** · July-09-13, 02:22 PM

Originally Posted by SWMAP

Since most people aren't going to get their information from books any more, housing, cleaning, dehumidifying, de-bugging books - all costs of keeping paper books - won't be priorities for libraries.

I also have questions about the value of the collection. I recently saw a professional report on the value of a well-known Detroit collection about a famous person that will be nameless. Aside from a very few pieces of value to an ebay collector, most pieces, especially the books and ephemera, were considered to be in "poor condition" due to use, with dog-eared corners, brittle paper, torn bindings, etc.

The "valuable" collection turned out to be mostly sentimental and valueless, not worth the space being rented.

It is highly unlikely that books stored in a school and used by school-children are in good enough condition to even sell on Ebay for very much.

I love books, but I am pretty much tossing them now. Even cookbooks and food writing are more available, better catalogued and more enticing online. As for the rest – have you seen the sagging bookshelves at your local Salvation Army? I’m certain that what’s on those shelves gets tossed often.
I imagine that the HP protest is much more about the arrogance of an EM rather than about some tattered books.

Why throw them into a damn dumpster? I agree about the limited usefulness and actual value of the books, but there are recycling places that can @ least turn them into something more useful then a landfill. I swear, someones putting something in the water because Detroit and surrounding areas just keep muddling along, doing the same thing "we've always done this way".

**Baselinepunk** · July-09-13, 03:44 PM

"Actually, they sell them. Duh!"

"Well, must say, anyone approving of ditching books must be a little lacking in culture. Then to insult charter schools????

Whats the message, no school, no culture for inner city kids? You are serious lame!"

What's seriously lame is your readin' skills. I think you need to take another look at what I wrote because your response is no where near where it should be if one actually took the time to understand the statement.

First of all, let's strike down your first obtuse remark. If libraries didn't get rid of a few books now and then, the stacks and storage areas would be overflowing with materials. It's a fact, whether they toss them, sell them, give' em away at some point in time an active library collection must be weeded for new accessions. So don't act like it's some sort of sin for a repository to throw a book away.

If the materials are truly high in historic and intrinsic value, then the right move is to rescue them and hopefully placed with friendly repositories who have the mean to properly care and feed the materials ... in perpetuity, hopefully.

From this link in the article to a previous article:

http://www.freep.com/article/2013062...oks-thrown-out

The materials in this collection appear to have been picked over by the charter school system first before these items where placed in the trash. Included in the items recovered where items with personal / financial information on it.

Further, the charter school claimed that they recovered most of what they threw out. So, in essences, the charter took the good stuff and didn't properly dispose of the personal and financial documents -- which should be the subject of a lawsuit now against the charter and one of the BIGGEST bitches about the situation. But, it gets glossed right over ....

This article also talks about a "deinvestment in the urban areas"; I agree. sumas should be very pissed at this charter school company for not providing "no school, no culture for inner city kids" as they put it.

Charter schools, my friend ... suck. In addition to crap like this, they suck money that should be going to public schools and divert it into for-profit companies that do not have a proven track record of being better than public schools. Even the main charter school association can't quantify the successful affect their model has -- even though they require their teachers to do / keep an obnoxious amount of busy paperwork keeping stats, stats, stats.

Of course just like not all public schools suck; not all charters suck. However, charters were proposed a long time ago to be the solution to "failing grades" and were going to change the face of education as we knew it. They FAILED!

All they've done is take taxpayer money and have provided the same, and in most cases worse, service than a public school.

Frankly, we don't have all of the answers or the whole story. They don't even know how big this "collection" was. Lee states that these materials at one time represented about 40% of the total HP library collection. However, how much of the "good stuff" did the charter take? How much was given away before the other stuff hit the dumpster. Who informed former City Council president Wheeler that the materials were in the dumpster in the first place? Did he just happen to be "johnny on the spot"? How much of what was left has now wound up in the personal collections of the rescuers? And this is only a very topical listing; there are many other questions as well ...

"Lee said the district began building its black history collection after the civil rights movement, a result of a demand by activists for black history studies to be integrated into the school curriculum.

In the 1990s, the district appointed him to a committee, part of a broader effort to expand its black history curriculum."

I see he has a real personal connection to these materials, and I would like to hear more about what actually made it to the dumpster, and exactly what those guys took out of the dumpster. 1,000 items sounds like a lot but considering that there were personal and financial documents recovered -- for all we know now, it could be a few tapes, a couple of pubs and 994 receipts.

Further, because sumas kinda got their Tena in a twist earlier, I want to be clear that I am not in favor of destroying items/materials that have true value. What I am not in favor is jumping one of the many bandwagons that happen around here daily before the whole story is known. If it is a true cause, I will fight just as hard these items that I do for the materials I professionally take care of. But I'm going to be really pissed if this turns out to be another bitchfest without cause.

**Richard** · July-09-13, 04:14 PM

Are we really at the point where we place a lower value or tell those who have no internet through no fault of their own that they are not worth the inspiration a simple book may bring?

They could have donated them to the community centers and made them available to those who would value them the most or be able to use them.

We were raised pre internet,you read books and learned.

If you could use one book to help a child that is surrounded by chaos and that book was their escape on a path to a better life,you could say in that case that book was invaluable ,not only to that child but to society as a whole.

I know several well run charter schools that serve all of the community well, no matter what income level race color or creed.

It is a disservice and insult to the community to allow private schools to operate under the guise of being a charter ,no where else is it allowed.

**SWMAP** · July-09-13, 05:54 PM

Really, most schoolchildren, even in HP, have a smart phone now. They already have access to all the world's knowledge.

**Scottathew** · July-09-13, 05:59 PM

It makes no sense that they would throw them away before at least trying to give them away.

What the cash strapped district should have done was auction off the materials in blocks to raise money. Then offer up to the public to take whatever didn't sell. Throw away whatever is left after that.

**313WX** · July-09-13, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by Honky Tonk

I swear, someones putting something in the water because Detroit and surrounding areas just keep muddling along, doing the same thing "we've always done this way".

I've been thinking that for a while now [[seriously). That's why I don't drink the tap water.

**compn** · July-09-13, 08:22 PM

not all books and films are digitized.
if offered for free, people would grab those things up quickly.

dumpster diving is a great hobby and is good for the environment.

surprised the librarians would go along with this.
most librarians do what they can to save the knowledge.

**Goose** · July-09-13, 08:49 PM

first, it was stated it was a mistake, they weren't supposed to be thrown away....

as far as "giving" them away... even if they could find a sucker, i mean taker, the same people would be protesting that they didn't sell this "valuable" collection

so in order to satisfy the muck rakers... a professional cataloger and book valuation specialist would have to be hired to check the value of each book and collection, then these books would have to be marketed and sold, presumably at an expense...

and in the end, as with most beauacracies... 10X more money would have to be spent to realize 10% on the sale... its a losing proposition, chasing spent money... throw that chit away.....

**noise** · July-10-13, 07:13 AM

Originally Posted by compn

surprised the librarians would go along with this.
most librarians do what they can to save the knowledge.

Most librarians weed collections as a job function.

**noise** · July-10-13, 07:14 AM

Originally Posted by Goose

first, it was stated it was a mistake, they weren't supposed to be thrown away....

as far as "giving" them away... even if they could find a sucker, i mean taker, the same people would be protesting that they didn't sell this "valuable" collection

so in order to satisfy the muck rakers... a professional cataloger and book valuation specialist would have to be hired to check the value of each book and collection, then these books would have to be marketed and sold, presumably at an expense...

and in the end, as with most beauacracies... 10X more money would have to be spent to realize 10% on the sale... its a losing proposition, chasing spent money... throw that chit away.....

Or they just checked WorldCat and realized 15 other libraries in the state have the exact same materials.