Awful Library Books - the Funny Librarian Blog with an Important Message

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Amongst everything you might find at your local library, what they’re most known for is, of course, books. Yet, have you ever taken the time to explore some of the more, shall we say, unusual books at your library? Well, thanks to a popular new blog called “Awful Library Books,” you won’t have to.

Run by two actual librarians, Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com features some of the most bizarre and hilariously obsolete library books found at their public library in South Lyon, MI. Classics such as Jobs in Business and Office and Those Amazing Leeches are just some of the oddities found on their site.

Though it’s primarily for the reader’s amusement, there is a serious moral to the story. While many libraries lose funding, it’s still very important that they maintain up-to-date books and reference materials. It takes professional librarians to properly weed through library materials and filter out obsolete and irrelevant old books (e.g.: a 1966 book on “The Use of Computers in Business Organizations”).

According to an interview with the Detroit Free Press, the site gets about 5,000 hits a day. In addition to books found by the two bloggers, they receive submissions of “awful” library books from all over the world. The blog has been featured in TIME and BoingBoing.net, and the bloggers have appeared on the BBC and Jimmy Kimmel Live.