I'd been checking out a hardbound original edition of our county's history, published in 1882. History as of 1882, which included stories back to the first settler in the area. Used it for stories (was a Scout leader) that had names and places that would resonate with local people. Our ancestors, recognizable as families still here today taking interesting, sometimes epic action.

Then one day, it was gone. Sold in the library's purged-book sale, probably for $1. Some well-meaning shelf-optimizer just looked at the checkout frequency or some other defensible metric, and it came up "toss".

If a library can't curate our local history, unavailable anywhere else in the world from any source, I call that a total fail.

I discontinued my library card, and have never been back. It was disheartening, disillusioning, heartbreaking. To realize (what had been going on for some time) that a library was no longer a place to keep books. It was a circulation machine for juvenile fiction and romance novels. Something like a dentist's waiting room, writ large.

Btw, the book was probably worth hundreds. Nothing at the book sale sells for over $5. So clearly the library had no idea what they had.