Weeding is Fundamental Revisited

Summary

99% Invisible: "Weeding is Fundamental" — Detailed Summary

Released August 5, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled “Weeding is Fundamental,” host Roman Mars delves into the intricate and often overlooked process of weeding in libraries—the systematic removal of books to maintain a relevant and accessible collection. Using the San Francisco Public Library’s experience post-1989 earthquake as a focal point, the episode explores the balance between preserving knowledge and adapting to changing times.

The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and Its Aftermath

On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area, causing widespread devastation. Roman Mars sets the scene:

"It was the first major earthquake ever to be broadcast live on national TV." [03:08]

The San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) sustained significant damage, particularly on its upper floors, where bookshelves collapsed, and half a million books were displaced. Librarian Jason Gibbs recounts:

"Bookshelves had collapsed sideways or fallen on their faces and books lay in piles everywhere." [04:28]

Despite no injuries at the library, the sheer volume of damaged books necessitated immediate action to restore safety and functionality.

The Weeding Process and 'M.U.S.T.Y.®' Guidelines

Post-earthquake, SFPL embarked on an extensive weeding process to reclaim space and ensure the library’s continued relevance. Weeding involves removing books that are outdated, damaged, or less frequently used. Cheryl Jennings introduces Avery Trufelman from the Oakland Public Library:

"We classify the books we remove using the acronym M.U.S.T.Y.: Misleading, Ugly, Superseded, Trivial, and Your collection has no use for this book." [06:34]

Each category serves a specific purpose:

• Misleading or factually inaccurate
• Ugly (damaged or aesthetically unpleasing)
• Superseded by newer editions
• Trivial (lacking substantial content)
• Your collection has no use for this book

Sharon McKellar emphasizes the thoughtful nature of weeding:

"We're not just randomly grabbing books off the shelf and putting them in the trash." [06:16]

Management's Overzealous Weeding and Guerrilla Librarians

In the wake of the earthquake, SFPL management accelerated the weeding process, employing a color-coded system:

• Green: Checked out within the year
• Yellow: Checked out within the past two years
• Red: Not checked out in over two years [08:53]

This green-yellow-red system, however, proved to be a blunt tool, leading to excessive removal without nuanced consideration. Librarian Jason Gibbs reflects:

"They didn’t use the M.U.S.T.Y.® system; it was rather arbitrary." [09:29]

Frustrated with the rapid and indiscriminate weeding, a group of librarians, led by Jason Gibbs, formed the Guerrilla Librarians. Their mission was to protect the library’s collection by undermining management’s directives. Actions included replacing red slips with green ones to prevent the removal of valuable books.

Nicholson Baker and the Controversy

The situation escalated when Nicholson Baker, a renowned author, became involved. Baker had previously criticized the disposal of library materials and was approached by the guerrilla librarians for assistance. His involvement led to a high-profile lawsuit demanding access to SFPL’s physical card catalog, which documented every book in the collection.

Baker’s revelation was explosive:

"This mass disposal is a hate crime directed at the past." [19:31]

His New Yorker article, “Author versus the Library,” accused SFPL of systematically destroying over 200,000 volumes, sparking a fierce public debate. The library responded by attempting to discredit Baker, but the damage was done, revealing deeper issues in library management.

However, it was later discovered that Baker’s initial calculations were flawed due to inaccurate measurements by one of the guerrilla librarians, although the sentiment of loss remained impactful.

Policy Reforms and Legacy

The controversy served as a catalyst for significant policy changes within SFPL and the broader library community:

1. Revised Weeding Procedures: Libraries adopted more nuanced weeding criteria, ensuring that valuable books were preserved based on expert assessments rather than arbitrary metrics.

2. Community Redistribution Program: Instead of discarding extra copies, libraries began distributing them to schools, colleges, and prisons, ensuring continued access to resources.

3. Enhanced Inter-Library Communication: Pioneered by Kenneth Dowlin, SFPL established online communication channels with other libraries, allowing for the sharing and borrowing of books, thereby reducing the need for excessive weeding.

Sharon McKellar summarizes the impact:

"When it's done well with care and consideration, weeding isn't so bad at all." [25:47]

Nicholson Baker’s subsequent book, “Double Fold,” further analyzed the events and influenced library science curricula, cementing the weeding debacle as a pivotal case study in library management.

Conclusion

“Weeding is Fundamental” underscores the delicate balance libraries must maintain between curation and preservation. It highlights how unforeseen crises, like the 1989 earthquake, can expose underlying management issues and prompt necessary reforms. The episode also raises broader questions about the nature of books: Are they mere vessels of information, or do they hold intrinsic value as physical objects?

Nicholson Baker encapsulates this duality:

"Sometimes you want the words. Sometimes you want more than the words. You want the words laid out on the page." [22:29]

Ultimately, the episode celebrates the dedication of librarians and the evolving role of libraries in the digital age, ensuring that knowledge remains both accessible and well-preserved for future generations.

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Notable Quotes:

• "What does it mean to live a rich life? It means brave first leaps, tearful goodbyes, and everything in between." — Cheryl Jennings [00:31]

• "There was this sense that when it came to the physical collections, he didn't. He just didn't have any interest." — Ken Dowlin [11:52]

• "We want to bring you the most relevant, most current information, and the only way to do that is by having room to do it." — Sharon McKellar [07:37]

• "Guerrilla like the freedom fighter, fighting for." — Ken Dowlin [13:32]

• "The card catalog was a way of holding onto the memory of a quarter of a million books that they'd gotten rid of." — Nicholson Baker [24:43]

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the “Weeding is Fundamental” episode, providing a clear and engaging overview for those who haven't tuned in.

Transcript

[Roman Mars]

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[Cheryl Jennings]

It mean to live a rich life? It means brave first leaps, tearful goodbyes, and everything in between. With over 100 years experience navigating the ups and downs of the market and of life, your Edward Jones financial advisor will be there to help you move ahead with confidence. Because with all you've done to find your rich, we'll do all we can to help you keep enjoying it. Edward Jones Member, SIPC.

[Roman Mars]

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars There's a common complaint that people don't read books anymore, but the truth is print book sales are up these days. Since 2013, sales of physical books have increased every year. At first, people attributed this to the rise of adult coloring books, but even as their popularity has dwindled, book sales have risen. I'm talking about physical, old fashioned books with paper pages full of words. We love them.

[Pierce Gelly]

The great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges once said, I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. And I kind of agree.

[Roman Mars]

That's reporter Pierce Geli, although he's not normally a reporter.

[Pierce Gelly]

I'm a graduate student in creative writing, and for the past two years I've taught fiction writing to undergrads at the University of Virginia. I assign a lot of reading, but mostly it's in the form of photocopied pages. Don't worry, the print shop pays for the rights. I don't want to force my students to buy too much, but I always make sure I assign at least one physical book, and I always try to pick something that's beautiful one with a nice font, a lovely page design, a pleasing paper grain, and an intriguing cover. Don't get me wrong, the words inside matter too, but I think it's important for my students to have an object that accentuates the pleasure of the physical act of reading and something they would hold onto after the class had ended.

[Roman Mars]

I personally toss hundreds of pages of radio scripts in the recycling bin every month, but I would have a really hard time throwing away a book. Once the pages have a spine, it's like they have a soul. It would feel wrong, like you're spitting on knowledge itself. It's so hard to get rid of books.

[Pierce Gelly]

This is a story about books. And brace yourself how to get rid of them. And in the words of R.E.M. it starts with an earthquake.

[Roman Mars]

Downtown San Francisco in the background.

[Jason Gibbs]

And we zoom into Candlestick Park.

[Roman Mars]

It was the most Bay Area sporting event imaginable. The Oakland A's were playing the San Francisco giants in the 1989 World Series.

[Pierce Gelly]

Coming into the third game on October 17, 1989, the A's were in the lead. They had won the first two games, allowing Jose Canseco to score.

[Nicholson Baker]

And he fails to get Dave Parker.

[Pierce Gelly]

But just as the third game was about to kick off, the TV broadcast cut out.

[Roman Mars]

When the signal came back, it was no longer a baseball game.

[Cheryl Jennings]

This is Cheryl Jennings in the Channel 7 newsroom.

[Sharon McKellar]

As you may have noticed, our power was knocked out.

[Pierce Gelly]

These were the early minutes of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck near Santa Cruz.

[Roman Mars]

This was the first major earthquake ever to be broadcast live on national tv.

[Sharon McKellar]

We have a report of a person.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Trapped in an elevator in Shelter Bay.

[Pierce Gelly]

Part of the Bay Bridge had been destroyed. There were fires, fallen buildings, widespread power outages. In all, there were 63 deaths and almost 4,000 injuries.

[Roman Mars]

But this is a story about what happened to the San Francisco Public Library after this earthquake. And because of this earthquake.

[Pierce Gelly]

The library suffered a lot of damage, especially on the higher floors.

[Ken Dowlin]

That's one of the things about an earthquake is the effect of it is intensified the higher up you go on.

[Pierce Gelly]

The upper levels of the library floors had caved in. Jason Gibbs was a new librarian there, but he couldn't go to work for two months after the Quaker. It was too dangerous, he says. Bookshelves had collapsed sideways or fallen on their faces and books lay in piles everywhere.

[Ken Dowlin]

Like the books had been tossed around by some angry force.

[Roman Mars]

No one was injured at the San Francisco Public Library, but the earthquake dumped half a million books on the floor.

[Pierce Gelly]

Even after two months of repairs, the post earthquake situation in the San Francisco Public Library was still pretty bad. Library management determined that the stacks weren't safe and designated a new room for public browsing. Librarians curated a selection of books that they thought the public would most like to read, and those books went in that room.

[Ken Dowlin]

But they realized along the way that not every book was going to fit.

[Pierce Gelly]

In other words, even this winnowed down selection of books was too large for the available space. They needed to winnow it down even more.

[Ken Dowlin]

The Earthquakes just happened. We don't have this shelving anymore. We need to make space. The that's a reasonable thing to do if you approach it in a thoughtful.

[Pierce Gelly]

Way, because libraries do get rid of books all the time, earthquake or not. Put simply, there are so many new books coming in every day and only a finite amount of library space.

[Roman Mars]

The practice of freeing up library space is called weeding.

[Sharon McKellar]

If you think about. Sounds ugly, but it is a really good description.

[Roman Mars]

That's Sharon McKellar. She supervises teen services at the Oakland Public Library. Avery Trufelman went down the street to visit her and see how she weeds.

[Sharon McKellar]

You have to weed your garden for, like, the flowers to grow. I'm not a gardener.

[Pierce Gelly]

And weeding is not just about holding the book in your hands and asking yourself if that book sparks joy.

[Sharon McKellar]

There's really, really specific guidelines. We're not just randomly grabbing books off the shelf and putting them in the trash.

[Pierce Gelly]

We, McKellar and many other librarians at libraries all over the world weed their shelves using the same set of guidelines. And it has an excellent acronym. Musty. M U S T Y. M is.

[Roman Mars]

For misleading or factually inaccurate. U is for ugly.

[Sharon McKellar]

This one's a little ugly. It's like the COVID is a little broken.

[Pierce Gelly]

Isn't the fact that it's so beat.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Up an indication that it was love for sure.

[Sharon McKellar]

So if it's been checked out in the last three years, I'd probably actually buy a new copy of it. If it hasn't been checked out in the last three years, I would probably consider it for withdrawal.

[Roman Mars]

S for superseded.

[Sharon McKellar]

Buy a new edition or a much better book.

[Pierce Gelly]

This would be like an old manual for Windows 98 or an outdated travel guide. These are the kinds of books that get shredded.

[Roman Mars]

And the last two letters are T for trivial and Y for your collection has no use for this book because they really want that musty acronym to work.

[Pierce Gelly]

Those last two, the T and the Y, are trivial, and your library has no need for this book. These are the tricky ones. They're not necessarily statements of fact. They're judgments of value. What's trivial to me might be very important to you, and vice versa. But even here, these judgment calls are made by librarians who specialize in the relevant section based on circulation statistics. You just have to trust that your librarians are doing their best for the public.

[Sharon McKellar]

We want to be able to keep bringing you the most relevant, most current information, and the only way to do that is by having room to do it. So the only way we can do that is by sometimes withdrawing the things that are not as useful anymore.

[Pierce Gelly]

Although some sections, according to the library guidelines, are generally self weeding.

[Sharon McKellar]

In other words, they disappear.

[Pierce Gelly]

Oh, people steal them.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah.

[Sharon McKellar]

Certain sections of the library tend to disappear more than others. Books about marijuana, the Bible, and the occult are probably the biggest ones I can think of.

[Pierce Gelly]

But for the sections that do have to get weeded, weeding is generally a touchy subject. The reason why is probably already clear to you. People don't like the idea of books being thrown away.

[Roman Mars]

We like books a lot, and perhaps no one loves books more than librarians.

[Ken Dowlin]

There's a part of you that just winces every time you have to remove a book. I mean, books are dear to us. Part of my maturing as a librarian is to get over that a little bit.

[Pierce Gelly]

Yes, weeding is normal and necessary.

[Roman Mars]

But after the 1989 earthquake, the San Francisco Public Library started weeding an unusual amount of books.

[Pierce Gelly]

The librarians were told to move quickly, and they didn't use musty or any sort of comparable system.

[Roman Mars]

The librarians were ordered to go through each collection, book by book, and insert a slip of paper into each green, yellow, and red.

[Pierce Gelly]

Green meant the book had been checked out that year. Yellow meant the book had been checked out in the last two years, and red meant that it had been over two years since somebody had checked out that book.

[Ken Dowlin]

And the red books were the ones that were in potential danger.

[Roman Mars]

Danger because management had decided that the red books had to go.

[Pierce Gelly]

Compared to the careful consideration of musty, the system of the green, yellow and red cards is a rather blunt instrument.

[Ken Dowlin]

It's certainly not the only measure whether somebody has borrowed it within the last period of time. It felt rather arbitrary, and it wasn't.

[Pierce Gelly]

Really clear where the red card books were going to go or if they would ever be used again. In Jason Gibbs department, for example, the art and music collection, the discarded books got sent to an abandoned hospital owned by the city because there was nowhere else to put them.

[Roman Mars]

Even battle hardened librarians like Gibbs felt that the weeding was happening too fast. You had librarians in different sections weeding furiously and not really communicating with each other. As a consequence, lots and lots of books were removed from the library, and no one quite knew how many because no one was keeping track.

[Ken Dowlin]

It was ultimately, I think, a weakness of management from the top.

[Pierce Gelly]

Jason Gibbs is a pretty even keeled guy, but that's his diplomatic way of saying that. The problems began with the head librarian at that time, a man named Kenneth Dowlin. Within a year or two, you could be visiting the public library without leaving your home.

[Roman Mars]

Since this is in the years leading up to the 1989 earthquake. The same. The San Francisco Public Library was starting to rethink its whole approach to books in light of a new little thing called the Internet.

[Pierce Gelly]

Imagine plugging a computer like this one into any telephone in the world and being able to search any library in the world. And a big part of this pivot was when, in 1987, San Francisco hired Kenneth Dowling as its new city librarian. As San Francisco city librarian, Ken Dowling must make sure that 2 million people have access to 18 million books and other information on a limited budget. Dowlin was all about the Internet. He had recently published a book called the Electronic Library, in which he argued that technology was changing the way people used information and therefore changing the role of librarians. This is a clip of him. The Internet Web world, if you will, collapses time, collapses distance, and is collapsing cost.

[Roman Mars]

If this sounds unremarkable, not to mention a bit quaint, keep in mind that Dowlin was saying all this stuff as early as 1984. He certainly understood at an early stage what the Internet was going to do for communication.

[Pierce Gelly]

But there was a flip side to Dowland's visionary concept of digitally networked libraries. Some people felt that Dowlin had a distressing lack of concern for books.

[Ken Dowlin]

There was this sense that when it came to the physical collections, he didn't. He just didn't have any interest.

[Pierce Gelly]

Dowlin was also overseeing the design of a new main library for the city of San Francisco, which would complete his vision of the library of the future. The city is building a new $100 million library that is wired for computers as well as television. This new library would have twice as much space as the old one. But a big chunk of that space wasn't going to be for shelving books. Instead, much of the library's interior was devoted to an atrium in the middle of the building, which would rise 86ft to a conical glass roof. Lots of librarians worried that this big, empty atrium wouldn't leave a lot of space for books.

[Roman Mars]

The atrium was evidence that books were not the sole priority of this building, and Dowlin wasn't going to let a good crisis go to waste. The earthquake was a perfect excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway, shrink the physical collection. Before the move to the new space.

[Pierce Gelly]

Dowland's administration started sending books to landfills in the days after the quake. Books are being sent out by the truckload several times a week. This is not normal library practice.

[Roman Mars]

27 librarians signed a petition asking Kenneth Dowland for the weeding to stop. But that didn't work. So Jason Gibbs and his colleagues decided to do something.

[Ken Dowlin]

In any institution, you have a variety of people. There are some people who will just kind of do whatever they're told, and then there are other people who feel like they have a higher calling to the profession.

[Pierce Gelly]

Gibbs and librarians from several other departments felt that higher calling. They banded together and called themselves the guerrilla librarians.

[Ken Dowlin]

Guerrilla like the freedom fighter, fighting for.

[Roman Mars]

The freedom to not put little slips of red paper on books against the orders of management.

[Ken Dowlin]

Let's just say that we did not withdraw books because they hadn't circulated. We generally held on to the collection.

[Roman Mars]

Jason says that other guerrilla librarians snuck into the stacks and replaced red slips with green ones, thereby designating the book as a circulating book and keeping it in the collection.

[Pierce Gelly]

The guerrilla librarians wanted to determine exactly how many books had been weeded and how many had been dumped. But nobody had any idea how many books were being taken away. And there was a risk that they'd never be able to find out the magnitude of this massive clearing because Kenneth.

[Roman Mars]

Dowlin decided to get rid of the physical card catalog, those files full of index cards chronicling each book.

[Pierce Gelly]

The card catalog is an artifact. But I will not support the view that the card catalog is a working technology to help people find books anymore. It is not, and most of the libraries in the world know that and have moved on.

[Roman Mars]

He was right about this. Already at that point, more than 90% of the nation's libraries had computerized their card catalogs.

[Pierce Gelly]

The earthquake itself allowed the San Francisco Public Library to modernize their catalog. With the disaster relief money they were granted, the library was able to get electronic catalog software. So now, logically, Dowland wanted to get rid of the physical card catalog, which the library had stopped updating in 1991.

[Sharon McKellar]

San Francisco's old card catalog was not.

[Roman Mars]

Moved to the new library.

[Pierce Gelly]

It is locked up and inaccessible to the public. But this move to get rid of the old card catalog caused a surprisingly intense outcry from the guerrilla librarians. And it wasn't just a matter of nostalgia or personal preference. The physical card catalog said exactly what was in the library before all the arbitrary weeding.

[Roman Mars]

If a book was red tagged and weeded, it wouldn't be registered in the new digital system. There would be no record it had ever existed at all. And so the old card catalog was more than just a card catalog.

[Nicholson Baker]

The card catalog is evidence Evidence of a purge.

[Pierce Gelly]

To get to the card catalog, the librarians pulled out their secret weapon. Nicholson Baker.

[Nicholson Baker]

I'm Nicholson Baker, and I am a writer of books, fiction, nonfiction. And I became, for a brief period of time, a library activist.

[Pierce Gelly]

Baker is a writer of novels and essays that celebrate the minutiae of daily Life. And in 1994, Baker had gotten national attention for a New Yorker article about the disposal of physical card catalogs, a practice that had become increasingly common and which upset Baker a lot.

[Nicholson Baker]

The San Francisco Public Library had a very ornate, beautiful card catalog. That feeling that you have when your fingers would dance over the little cardboard pieces and you could tell a subject that was popular because the tops were darker and there's all sorts of, you know, tricks that were just fun.

[Pierce Gelly]

The guerrilla librarians reached out to Baker for help. By now it was 1996, and the new library was nearing completion. The lost books, evidenced only by their locked away card catalog, were teetering on the edge of disregard.

[Roman Mars]

In their email to Nicholson Baker, the librarians wrote, you are the only one who can save it now.

[Nicholson Baker]

Part of me thought, oh, God, this is going to get complicated.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, it would. At the time, Baker was living just across the bay in Berkeley, so he made a formal request to inspect the card catalog. Kenneth Dowland denied that request. So Baker sued the library for access to the card catalog.

[Nicholson Baker]

Never sue anything if you can avoid it and don't sue a library.

[Pierce Gelly]

This lawsuit took a while, and it was a bit of a mess, but it automatically classified the card catalog as a public document. Now the library had to keep it.

[Roman Mars]

And then Baker and the guerrilla librarians got to work in secret.

[Nicholson Baker]

And, you know, you can imagine this with kind of Mission Impossible music going, yes, please.

[Pierce Gelly]

The guerrilla librarians snuck into off limits areas in the library. They took away books that were going to be destroyed. In other words, they stole them.

[Roman Mars]

The guerrillas stockpiled hundreds and hundreds of library discards in their homes, in their cars, in their offices and lockers and boxes, all in the hope that they would someday be returned to the library.

[Pierce Gelly]

Nicholson Baker stole books, too.

[Nicholson Baker]

I was driving back and forth across the Bay Bridge with my car full of books that I had actually found in this place. That was the deselection room.

[Pierce Gelly]

Baker ignored the staff only signs and walked right into the deselection room, the basement storage, all the places where the SFPL were storing books. He picked up a bunch of books that had no match in the online catalog and found some real treasures.

[Nicholson Baker]

They had stored all these, you know, including 17th century, very valuable Books and stuff was down there.

[Roman Mars]

Baker, along with a historian, began comparing the online catalog to the physical card catalog. As they cross referenced the two lists, it turned out that a lot of books were missing way more than anyone had expected. Let me tell you what an opening.

[Pierce Gelly]

Day celebration today at last.

[Roman Mars]

In April of 1996, the new main Library opened its doors with panache.

[Pierce Gelly]

Talk about fanfare. Nothing less than a parachute jump into Civic center with the man holding the symbolic key to the new library.

[Roman Mars]

And In May of 1996, about a month after the library opened, the Guerrilla librarians organized an event in the library auditorium where Baker delivered a speech stating what he had found.

[Pierce Gelly]

Baker contended that Dowland was responsible for a massive destruction of books and the systematic removal to a landfill of at least 200,000 volumes.

[Nicholson Baker]

And I just said it right there in the library itself in a talk, and I think it really startled people.

[Roman Mars]

The phrase that got Baker the most attention was when he called this mass disposal a, quote, hate crime directed at the past. This really upset library management, and it.

[Nicholson Baker]

Became this kind of minor dust up in San Francisco.

[Pierce Gelly]

Word had begun to spread that Baker was writing another story for the New Yorker, one specifically about this whole weeding debacle. So the president of the library commission wrote to the New Yorker's editor at that time and attempted to kill the piece by discrediting Baker. It didn't work. And Baker's article came out in October of 1996. It was called the Author versus the Library. A current New Yorker article called it the Great Book Purge, claiming more than 100,000 rare and one of a kind books were hauled to the the dump. And then things got a little out of hand. The library hit back, condemning Baker for accusing them of a hate crime and saying that he misunderstood the problem. They also tried to discredit him because of some bad math he had reported.

[Roman Mars]

It turns out one of the guerrilla librarians had messed up the measurements of the old library shelves. In fact, the new library had much more space for books than the old one.

[Nicholson Baker]

It was a very bad error. It was very embarrassing, although it didn't.

[Pierce Gelly]

Change the fact that the library had taken so many books to the dump.

[Roman Mars]

Then both sides started lobbying insults at each other as the local and national press piled on. One paper compared Baker to the Unabomber. It was basically an analog Twitter feud.

[Nicholson Baker]

I wasn't prepared to be part of it. I didn't know that I was getting into that kind of a battle. It was really ugly.

[Pierce Gelly]

And even from Guerrilla librarian Jason Gibbs standpoint, the Whole weeding controversy got a little blown out of proportion.

[Ken Dowlin]

It probably was not as horrible as Nicholson Baker made it out, but it was horrible enough.

[Roman Mars]

Meanwhile, the new library itself had already been built, and it was, judging from the influx of visitors, a success.

[Pierce Gelly]

As charges and counter charges fly, three times as many visitors stream through the doors of the new library, an indication that some book lovers welcomed the change.

[Roman Mars]

Some of those books saved by the guerrilla librarians in boxes and lockers were transferred back into the collection. All the books in Jason Gibbs Department Art and Music, made it back. But he says that many of the other books didn't. They stayed gone, and many of them probably got discarded.

[Pierce Gelly]

Nicholson Baker says he still has some of the books he stockpiled. Given the painful experience of the controversy, the the library wasn't really interested in reshelving them.

[Roman Mars]

But at the end of the day, the controversy wasn't only about what to do with old books. It was a debate about what books are. Are they beautiful objects that we can smell and touch and collect? Or are they eternal sources of knowledge accessible to everyone in the ether?

[Nicholson Baker]

Well, and it's both. In a given research quest, you and I might want to find out what is in a book in the fastest possible way. Well, nowadays it's miraculous. Sometimes you want the words. Sometimes you want more than the words. You want the words laid out on the page.

[Pierce Gelly]

Clearly, Nicholson Baker can see Dowland's perspective, but Baker maintains that we shouldn't give up on the printed page. His argument and the public battle around it in the 90s was a big reason why the San Francisco Public Library totally overhauled their collections policies.

[Roman Mars]

They made it a policy that if a library branch is considering weeding a last copy of some book, they must send that copy to a subject specialist who will decide if it can be weeded or not.

[Pierce Gelly]

And for the books that do have to go, the San Francisco Public Library developed a community redistribution program to make sure the extra copies of popular books can live on somewhere else. We distribute them to schools and city colleges and prisons.

[Roman Mars]

And strangely enough, one of the biggest changes to the modern practice of weeding is something that Kenneth Dowlin himself helped establish online communication between libraries.

[Ken Dowlin]

You know, in an ideal world, you might want to have every book, but we just don't have the shelf space for every book. So you rely on somebody else's shelves to hold the book.

[Pierce Gelly]

Some libraries spell musty with an I and an e at the end instead of a Y for misleading, ugly, superseded, trivial, irrelevant, or elsewhere. Like if a copy of the book is at another library nearby. Jason Gibbs at the SFPL and Sharon McKellar across the bay at the Oakland Public Library can now communicate with each other instantly, so they can share bookspace and make different volumes available to readers in both cities.

[Roman Mars]

And this has huge implications for what gets weeded and why. In this respect, Kenneth Dowin was very right.

[Ken Dowlin]

He certainly failed in terms of managing the collection, but he succeeded to the extent of bringing us into the wider network of libraries online.

[Pierce Gelly]

And yet still, because of Baker's 1996 lawsuit, the San Francisco Public Library has kept the old card catalog they are legally required to.

[Nicholson Baker]

The card catalog was a way of holding onto the memory of a quarter of a million books that they'd gotten rid of.

[Roman Mars]

Those cabinets full of cards are still.

[Ken Dowlin]

There in storage, practically barricaded in by all kinds of other supplies. But I'll go down and visit it.

[Pierce Gelly]

Every now and then, just to say hi.

[Ken Dowlin]

Yeah, well, just to know it's there.

[Pierce Gelly]

After this weeding debacle, Nicholson Baker became even more vested in philosophies and practices of archiving and went on to publish a book that touched on all this, called Double Fold. It looks at these events in the much broader context of the digitization of libraries. And this book is now commonly assigned in master's programs in library science.

[Sharon McKellar]

We read the Nicholson Baker book in library school.

[Pierce Gelly]

That's Sharon McKellar again from the Oakland Public Library. She says that the debacle at the San Francisco Public Library has become a case study about weeding.

[Sharon McKellar]

Why we do weed and how we should weed and what could be done, you know, how to do it well and what to avoid and all that kind of stuff.

[Roman Mars]

And when it's done well with care and consideration, weeding isn't so bad at all.

[Sharon McKellar]

For me, weeding is fun. It's a chance to really touch the books and see how they're doing and see what people are interested in.

[Pierce Gelly]

That's what all this comes down to. It's what people are interested in. Weeding isn't just about what to cut. It's also about what to keep. It's about what the public wants to read.

[Sharon McKellar]

Your voice does matter. And we're maintaining a collection for the public and for the people who use it.

[Roman Mars]

And so every time you check out a book from the library, you are casting a vote to your local librarian, roving the stacks to keep this title in circulation for everyone to read. That story originally aired in 2019. It was reported by Pierce Gelly and edited, edited by Avery Trufelman. Original tech Production by Sharif Youssef Remixed by Martin Gonzalez Ken Dowland did not respond to our interview requests, but a huge thanks to the librarians who helped us with context and background, especially Shelly Cocking and Mindy Linetsky, both from the San Francisco Public Library. Thanks as well to Oren Radolfsky. After the break. The dictionary in reverse Stay with us. You know it doesn't belong in your epic summer plans Getting burned by your old wireless bill While you're planning beach trips and barbecues and three day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. Make the switch to Mint Mobile With Mint you can get the coverage and speeds you're used to, but for way less money. I'm talking way less money. And for a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. I was really anxious about making the switch, but the cell phone coverage in my house is better than it used to be and I think I'm saving like over $1,000 a year this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer for your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com invisible that's mintmobile.com invisible upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Let's be real. B2B marketing is tough. You can craft the perfect campaign, but if it lands in front of the wrong people, it might as well be invisible. It's like reaching pro gamers instead of set of programmers. That's where LinkedIn ads come in. LinkedIn is a network of over 1 billion professionals who actually get business on LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue and more. So stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals with LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com invisible that's LinkedIn.com invisible Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Article makes it effortless to create a stylish, long lasting home at an unbeatable price, whatever your personal style may be. Article offers a curated range of mid century, modern, coastal and scandi inspired pieces that not only only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other article product. Their carefully selected collections feature high quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. There is no filler. Every item is chosen for its craftsmanship, design and lasting value. My house is like an article furniture longitudinal study. I sleep in an article bed my wife Joy works at and we eat at an article dining room table and we sit in article chairs. And it has been this way for years and years and years. All the furniture I've ever gotten from Article is still in service and performing at its peak. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com 99 and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com 99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place, from consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. And with their collection of cutting edge design design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. The best thing about Squarespace to me is that it works on whatever scale or level of commitment that you need it to. It's perfect for your primary business and your occasionally updated portfolio. I mean, sometimes you have grand ambitions for a website and then you just like, you know, let it go a little bit. But it'll always work. If it's on Squarespace, you don't have to worry about it. Head to squarespace.com invisible for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use Offer Code Invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Finding books in the library is now pretty simple. You can go up to a computer, you type in the name of the book or the author. The computer will tell you where you can find it in the stacks, if it's checked out or not, how many holds there are, whether the branches might have copies. But before computers, there were card catalogs, massive filing cabinets of index cards for every book. Librarians would have to make a card for the drawers that were sorted by title, and then another card for the drawers that were sorted by author, and for nonfiction books, a couple more cards for the drawers that were sorted by subject. Every time you wanted to sort the information in a new way, you needed to create an entirely new index. Our senior editor, Jelaney hall, has a story about a particularly niche sorting method. Why don't you start with who you are, actually?

[Cheryl Jennings]

Okay, yeah. So I am Delaney hall, and I am a producer and senior editor on staff.

[Roman Mars]

All right, so what is your story today?

[Cheryl Jennings]

Well, first, I'm going to introduce you to Peter Sokolowski.

[Jason Gibbs]

And my levels are okay. Okay. So I'm not too loud. I try to not pop my peas, but I get excited. I'll try not to talk too fast.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And the stuff that Peter gets really excited about, the stuff that makes him pop his peace and talk really fast, is language. Because he's the editor at large at Merriam Webster, and he's a lexicographer.

[Jason Gibbs]

Lexicographer is a person who compiles and edits dictionaries. That's the old definition. The great Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer in London in the mid 18th century, very famously defined a lexicographer as a harmless drudge.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And Peter, he actually said that they use that term affectionately now as like a kind of badge of honor. They like to be called harmless drudges. So don't worry about insulting them if you want to use that term.

[Roman Mars]

So what does a harmless drudge like Peter do all day at Merriam Webster?

[Cheryl Jennings]

Well, from his description, it sounds like they work in an office that is very, very quiet, silent, basically. And it's filled with these massive steel filing cabinets. And I've kind of been imagining it like that SC in Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end, where the man is pushing that crate through a huge warehouse, but instead of stacks of enormous crates, it's filled with metal filing cabinets. And those metal filing cabinets are filled with index cards.

[Jason Gibbs]

As far as I know, it's the largest body of collected evidence of any language in the world. It's 15 or 16 million index cards with a word in use, that is to say in context, with its full bibliography. So we know who wrote it and where it was published, when it was published.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And so that is the work of lexicographers. They're the keepers of that word history. And for a long time before computers came along, this is how they did it, with these massive systems of filing cabinets.

[Jason Gibbs]

There's the file for the phonetician for the pronunciation editor. There's the file for our dating editors who do the etymological dating. So it's a place full of file cabinets.

[Cheryl Jennings]

But this isn't actually a story about how the Merriam Webster offices are filled with filing cabinets.

[Roman Mars]

It's not okay.

[Cheryl Jennings]

No, it's not. It's a story about one special filing cabinet in their office. Okay, so here's where it gets really interesting. So one day, Peter was wandering through these endless rows of filing cabinets, and he came across this one.

[Jason Gibbs]

And one of them simply said backward index on it.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And so he opens up the cabinet that says backward index.

[Jason Gibbs]

And I realized what it was, which was all of the headwords of the unabridged dictionary. Some 315,000 separate index cards with only one word on them. And it was a headword typed backwards.

[Roman Mars]

And so the headword is the entry in the dictionary that's the first word, that's the word in question, right?

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah, exactly. So this index is like, imagine all the words in the dictionary, but typed backwards and then organized alphabetically.

[Roman Mars]

Okay. Okay. So why would you do that?

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah, that is the question. Because the utility of it is not immediately obvious, at least not to non lexicographers like you and me. But Peter, the harmless drudge, he kind of got it.

[Jason Gibbs]

Lexicography is an extreme sport. This is kind of a radical practice of collection and, and of archiving. And so to a certain degree, this is maybe the weirdest example of that kind of archiving. But it made a kind of sense to me.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And to really understand why it makes any kind of sense, you have to think back to when lexicographers first started compiling the backward index, which was in the 1930s, it turns out, which was a time before computers and all of the search possibilities that they allow in.

[Jason Gibbs]

The pre digital era. How else could we have known that there are, for example, 500 words in the dictionary that end in ology?

[Cheryl Jennings]

And. Yeah, yeah, you're getting it. That's because with a regular dictionary just organized in a regular alphabetical way, a word like ecology would not appear next to a word like technology, because one starts with E and one starts with T. Got it.

[Roman Mars]

Okay. So with a backward index, all the words that end in ology, for example, would be grouped together.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah. So you couldn't actually look up ology words. You would look up Y, G, O, L, O words. But in doing that, you would find them.

[Roman Mars]

Exactly.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah, yeah.

[Roman Mars]

So cool.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Kind of ingenious. And there are actually a lot of other examples of why this is useful.

[Jason Gibbs]

There was no way that they could know, for example, how many words in English made with the compound like, like, you know, block like, clock like, rock like, sock like, chalk like. Or how many open compounds. That is to say, two word phrases that use pony. So Highland pony, Shetland pony, Welsh pony, that kind of thing. And then it gets a little deeper. Those words that are related morphologically, like ethological, lithological, ornithological, you know, things that end in that particular sequence of letters, and then just basic rhyming sequences. Steepy, weepy, sweepy, 40, shorty, snorty.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And in fact, this backward index was instrumental in the creation of Merriam Webster's first rhyming dictionary.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, yeah, I have one of those.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Oh, yeah, yeah, they're still. They're very popular.

[Roman Mars]

They're really, really good. So by reading words backwards, you can start to see new kinds of patterns, like the ology pattern or the logical pattern or just rhyming patterns. That's so cool.

[Jason Gibbs]

The kind of lexical detail that we can get into by looking at the language backwards does sort of illuminate our knowledge of the. Of the language as we read it in a normal way.

[Roman Mars]

So you said it came from the 1930s, before there were computers. But does Peter know anything about who actually made this mysterious fallen cabinet?

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah, so after he discovered it, he started doing some research, and exactly who invented it is still a bit of a mystery. He figured out that it dates back to the 1930s, and there's some evidence that lexicographers worked on it up until the 1970s. So he knows how long it was actively being compiled. And he also found out that the project was a kind of favorite pet project of this one editor named Philip Gove. He edited Webster's third unabridged dictionary in the 1950s. And it sounds like he was very rigorous and rule oriented, who is sort.

[Jason Gibbs]

Of famous for his organizational skills and for making the dictionary apparatus, that is to say, the things that we use as kind of code in the dictionary. Things like, you know, what does a bold faced colon mean? What does a light faced, you know, italic semicolon mean? When can we use commas? There's a rule for everything.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And so it was really Gove who systematized all of that.

[Jason Gibbs]

He made a rule book for us, for the editors that was followed to the T. It was really, really strict and very kind of innovative in its way. And also kind of proto digital, because when we finally did digitize that dictionary, we recognized how very regular the apparatus was.

[Cheryl Jennings]

So Gove, from Peter's description, it seems like he thought about the dictionary with the logic of a computer programmer. But. But before, computers were a thing, and.

[Roman Mars]

Now that computers are a thing. I mean, you mentioned the backward index sort of fell out in the 1970s, which makes tons of sense. The computers must have really Changed the way lexicographers or the dictionary really works.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah, totally. I mean, for one thing, they have made the old school backwards index totally obsolete. On the Merriam Webster website, there's an advanced search function where you can type in ology or phobia.

[Roman Mars]

You don't have to spell it backwards.

[Cheryl Jennings]

No, you don't have to spell it backwards. It pulls up all the words that end with ology or phobia. So easy. We have it so easy.

[Roman Mars]

We really do. We really do.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And then computers have also allowed lexicographers like Peter to see other kinds of interesting patterns.

[Roman Mars]

For example.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Well, my favorite that we talked about in this interview is this function on Merriam Webster's website, which is called Time.

[Jason Gibbs]

Traveler, by which you can reorder the dictionary in chronological order as opposed to alphabetical order. Because ultimately alphabetical order is random, it's arbitrary. But chronological order isn't, because English develops in a very particular way. All the words, for example, about train travel and train tracks and coal and engines, they all come at a certain time. All words that have to do with repeating, they all come at a certain time. You know, the words that entered the language regarding the law, that are derived from French, they all come in at a similar time. So reorganizing the dictionary in a digital way turns out to be a way to sort of turn the dictionary into a three dimensional search rather than just simply a list. We can go in greater depth.

[Roman Mars]

That's amazing. That's so cool. Isn't that fascinating? That is so cool.

[Cheryl Jennings]

I love the idea of the time traveler.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, it's such a good way to order knowledge in a certain way.

[Cheryl Jennings]

And it's sort of like the backwards index was an early pre digital attempt at achieving that kind of three dimensional search.

[Roman Mars]

Right, right. That's so cool. Well, thanks.

[Cheryl Jennings]

Yeah, thank you.

[Roman Mars]

That was senior editor Delaney hall from our 2018 mini stories. 99% Invisible was produced and remixed this week by Martin Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Kathy 2 is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lej, Madonn Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, Jacob Medina Gleason, and me, roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites including Blue sky, as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of [e-mail] the new summer Merch collection is here and I don't mean to shock you, but you will find new 99% invisible swimsuits. Like trunks and one piece bodysuits. You might say, God, that's ridiculous. And everyone I've like presented this to is going, wow, that's really weird. And then they go, but like, if you do do them, can I have one? We also have some limited gems like exclusive Power Broker Merch and signed copies of the book the 99% Invisible City. Supplies are limited and once they're are gone, they are gone. Visit SiriusXMstore.com Invisible and use code 99PI25 for 25% off. Design is everywhere, including T shirts and beanies and yes, swimsuits.