It's such a bummer that public libraries won't have these physical objects on shelves in a discoverable form and place, where people can just stumble upon and page through them.
I've picked through a couple public library "removed from circulation sales" and always find at least one gem there's no obvious good cause for removal. It's hard to not become a hoarder in such situations.
Already brought two such finds home: Bombs Over Bikini [0] and Alaska Crude [1]. They're tiny, and dense with historically relevant photographs. It seems strange to remove them, I suspect it's partly because their contents are dark/depressing/embarrassing to the nation in hindsight. But that's arguably their value IMHO.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18354016-bombs-over-biki...
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25135337-alaska-crude
https://www.librarieslearn.org/self-paced-courses/collection...
God only knows how many works have been consigned to permanent oblivion because they were only of local or niche interest, when even notorious classical works that were read for a thousand years are no longer available in many library systems without ILL. (And sometimes not even then.)
Modern libraries are for entertainment, not education, with few exceptions.
Aside: do not donate books to the library unless you do not care what happens to them. If the library cannot sell them they will be pulped. They are almost never added to collections.
Aside2: for some reason rescuing library books from dumpsters is considered theft by some librarians, so be careful.
It's quite apparent when I've explored libraries in small towns on cross-country road-trips. Ideological influence for sure.
That's the basis of hauntology, that optimism for the future has gone, and we are "haunted" by promised futures lost.
Oh, that's kind of awesome. :)
Is the stuff you uploaded in some easy to find list?
Asking because a friend was recently looking for one of the sci-fi art books he had as a child, and we've been looking through Amazon (various countries), Ebay, etc.
Still haven't been able to nail down exactly who the author was, etc. "He'll know it when he sees it" :)
Here's a space-related scan of mine: https://archive.org/details/orbiting-stations/mode/2up
There were library books that for one reason or another made an impression on me as a kid. Sadly of course those old books have been rotated out of the system.
Books that replaced them didn't impress me. (Though perhaps as I have aged I am less impressionable?)
There were some great science and chemistry books for kids when I was young — to be replaced with "grossology" books.
I liked the books that showed future automobiles, spacecraft but I understand why those are dated. I'm not sure I have seen anything that has the same sense of optimism to replace them though.
Or maybe I just prefer the early space-art illustration and concept art in those books done by artists wielding gouache long before CG made everything look bland and lifeless.
In any event I tracked many of these books down on eBay and purchased them. (So often "DISCARD" stamped inside the front cover, a library card pocket inside the back cover.)
Because I am worried that I am becoming a hoarder I was inclined to instead scan many of the books I had collected and then return the original to the sea of used books.
I have uploaded to archive.org everything I scanned.
And I am happy to have in fact also found many other cool books there that I had assumed were going to be lost to time (thinking now about "The Boy Mechanic" bookstore example).