On weeding and saving

This post is not about anything library or web or anything 2.0 – it’s about books. Yesterday I received in the mail my first E-Bay purchase – a book from my childhood (a long time ago). As librarians we all recognize the question, and in truth, probably run from it. It starts out with “Uh, there was this book when I was a kid, and it had a pink cover, and it was about little rabbits, and the grandpa died, but it was OK because the little rabbits saw the rainbow he painted.” That was the sum total of my memory. Well, enter my colleague Aurora (aka superturbo), a former children’s librarian who’s really good at this sort of thing. She found it! Through creative searching at abebooks.com, she found it, despite the misspelling of “grandpa” as “granpda”.

I’ve thought about the book occasionally growing up, as I’ve watched a generation die and tried to explain death to little ones who don’t understand. And I’m amazed at the glut of books, heavy on theology, or denial of afterlifeness, or . . . . This simple book with gently drawn non-human characters spoke when my Grandpa Joe, a rough Norwegian who fixed my trike, died.

And now, as I hold the book in my hand, I wonder what is the responsibility of libraries. Do we preserve the history of the culture? We weed to make room; we weed to keep a current collection with a recent average copyright. It doesn’t serve us well to become a museum of old memories – in fact we’re working hard to shake that image. But is there a place to keep the memories, especially the picture books of childhood, in (perhaps) a special collection area.

And what do I do with my special treasure? Looking on WorldCat, I find 14 copies. For now, it has a place on my special bookshelf and I will scan and preserve it digitally. And read it, to anyone who needs its message.

I’ve also learned that the book was based on a 1934 Disney short “Funny Little Bunnies.” And, I've also found the mp3 file of the "Funny Little Bunnies" by the "Cricketts" on Lee Hartsfeld's blog.