He was, however, a MAJOR influence in conservative philosophy in the US for the last half century.

That’d be a shock for the Christian monastaries of the Middle Ages, many of whom saved knowledge after the fall of Rome.

Not to mention, the role of Christianity in the popularization of the book itself, the Gutenberg Bible, and oh…the popularization of the codex as a book form? Christians have been, on the whole throughout history, quite the friend of the written word in general.

And yes, the Burning of the Alexandria library is an old propaganda point with a more complex truth. The wikipedia article is actually fairly helpful. Basically, it had already been burned several times, and wasn’t nearly the place it had been by the time Theodosius got to it.

Yet, what about climate-change books which might be factually-challenged? Or “Intelligent Design”?

For the same reason, being “unbiased” need not involve purchasing one book about the Holocaust, along with another book purporting to prove the Holocaust never happened. Even though there are two viewpoints out there, the quality of a book is not determined by the votes of interested parties, as though acquisitions were a democracy. Am I “self-censoring” by not choosing the Holocaust-denier’s book? Everyone would admit that I’m not. But, likewise, am I “self-censoring” by forgoing Bush’s (or Obama’s) book, in favor of the other one? Such a question can only be determined by asking about my motives. Because Bush’s (or Obama’s) political views are much more widely accepted than the Holocaust-denier’s views are, is it not wrong to think that their works are entitled to my attention *for that reason alone*? Half the country probably rejects Darwinian theory of evolution. Should their numbers dictate the ideological balance of a section on my Biology shelf? “Oh, but politics and religion are more subjective, unlike science,” you might say. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.

If I go into a Borders and see half of the “Current Events” books are written by liberals and other leftists, while the other are written by conservatives and other right-wingers, it does not make me admire Borders for generously offering their customers a wide spectrum of opinions. More likely they have their bottom line in mind: appealing to as many customers as possible means selling more books at the end of the day.

It’s not really a valid criticism of a library to accuse it of not being similarly catholic (in the lower-case “c” meaning) in its representation of all religious and political viewpoints. It may mean that whoever is responsible for acquisitions is politically biased if certain views are under-represented. But it may also mean that this library is trying to fight against “bias” (which means bending facts to fit one’s argument), by only choosing books that carry markers of respectable fact-checking and logical coherence.

I’m not a fan of the ALA as a political org- and I think I’m pretty safe in saying that librarians, on the whole, go about 11-1 in the dem v repub divide. But, this guy is just a little ball o’ hate. Perhaps he meant that the ALA certifies library schools, meaning that no accepted MLS can be taught in a grad program that doen’st get accedidation by the ALA. That’s a bit of an issue- but all in all, any points he might have had or been able to make are completely lost and overshadowed by his overall idiocy and mental problems.

However, I’m really enjoying this article and the responses!

Of course Karl Marx is going to have more citations than “Barry Goldwater” because Marx works had consequences that effected the entire world, while Goldwater, no matter what you think of him, was not a major player on the world scene. But you will probably find listings for many other conservative authors who lived at the same time as Marx, such as Benjamin Disraeli,or later, like Winston Churchill, and of course the father of modern Conservatism,and almost all of the ideas held by conservatives in the US and anywhere else today, Edmund Burke.

The fact that those using the catalog do not even know enough about the history of conservatism to not be comparing apples to oranges in this case is not the fault of the libraries, but a rather limited education.