The tragedy of the modern library is that no one has the attention span for good books. Libraries are getting rid of the classics to make room for new books, the majority of which are not worth the paper they’re printed on. We would do well to heed C.S. Lewis’ call to read more old books for every new book that we read.

I personally think the focus on attention span is a red herring.

Many good books don't require that much attention span, and putting the onus on the reader to like and focus on a book that is supposed to be good feels kinda backward. Given that people binge watch whole tv series and still read a ton online there is a desire, and probably ways to properly reach the audience.

Not all classics need to be liked forever, tastes change, and the stories are retold in different manners anyway. I'd be fine with people reading Romeo and Juliet as a mastodon published space opera if it brings them joy and insights.

Most libraries track circulation of their catalog. If nobody is using the classics, they're going to get weeded. Most libraries have limited shelf space, and it's best used for things that people are using.

Archival can be part of a library too, but I think a reasonable tradeoff is interlibrary loans, public catalogs, and considering copies in other libraries while weeding. Some library systems can also move items to non-public stacks which may be less space constrained, and only access them on request.

This has been an ongoing discussion within libraries for more than a hundred years not a recent issue. Should libraries be a place with classics to uplift people or popular books that people want to read even if they are low quality?

> The tragedy of the modern library is that no one has the attention span for old books.

Fixed that to mean what you say.

Luckily, people still have the attention for good books. Which is why libraries still stock good books, classic or otherwise. They also stock books that people want to read. Which might seem odd until you realize that libraries are there for the community to use.

However, you are free to setup a library that stores books that no one reads.

I think this is a somewhat wrong framing, and its also shitty to blame libraries for this shift. Tech companies, for the most part, are responsible for the destruction of attention spans, if that has really happened. And I'd be happy to bet that by whatever criteria you choose to select there are more great books written per year now than in 1240 or whatever time you think they only wrote great shit. Its just that now there is much more to wade through and the media environment is totally different.

At any rate, I just think that its a very strange thing to do to use "old" as a substitute for "good." There are tons of old books that are moronic and if the population of the world back then had been the same as now there would be tons more.

People don't even have the attention span for tweets. You see people asking grok to summarize the points of whoever they're fighting with.

Try going back in time and explaining to Neil Postman that people today find watching TV to be a chore that needs abbreviation or summarization.

I find that old books can often take away more than they give to me. They often have outdated ideas on women or race and are usually far clumsier with depicting homeless, disabled, or sick people. Engagement with fans of old books often is a set of very sheepish defensiveness when I point these out.