
Do Not Read: Restricted collections in remarkable libraries - diodorus
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/do-not-read
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inostia
Restricted collections are always amazing to browse. In the Bay Area, for
example, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley is a fantastic resource for
browsing extremely old and rare books. I believe it's open to the public but
you have to register[0], and you have to specifically request the items from
circulation.

Want to see a Mark Twain manuscript, or an original Dürer print? You will be
able to "check" these items out in a time-box, and browse them on-site. It's
amazing how available these resources can be, and not many non-academic
researchers assume you can see these items with adequate permission.

Having been to many rare book conventions, I've seen the librarians from the
Bancroft Library purchasing items often upwards of tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars. The rare book world is very fascinating.

[0] [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-
library/plan-...](http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/plan-
a-visit)

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ChuckMcM
There was something of a game to identify a volume that was in the Doheney
library's restricted list at USC. It took a bit of social engineering and the
knowledge of a title in order to get the librarian to even let you know if the
volume was or was not part of the collection.

That said, libraries that take their archival mission seriously (as all good
libraries do) will always have to restrict access to volumes that are at risk
of damage or theft for moral, political, or value reasons.

~~~
sincerely
For the sake of those of us that will likely never be in that part of the
world would you like to say what the specific volume was?

~~~
hudibras
When I worked in a college library in Seattle, we had a single book that was
restricted so that the library patron had to read it* while supervised by a
library employee: a out-of-print, full-color field guide from the 1970s to
Pacific Northwest mushrooms.

*or, more commonly, photocopy specific pages.

~~~
jpatokal
Including psychedelic ones, I presume?

~~~
Mvandenbergh
I'm guessing the reason for the restriction was the risk of people stealing it
or razoring pages out - something that happens with some frequency with out of
print art books.

It's even more of an issue with books which have images of obscure flora and
fauna, at least with an art book if there's demand for a really good picture
of a sculpture or painting you can pay someone to go take one, with pictures
of rare mushrooms you'd have to go to huge lengths just to find them let alone
get good pictures of intact specimens.

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spin
The Yale rare books library[0] is a beautiful, amazing building to walk around
in. Most of the books are off-limits for fear of damaging them, I think. (This
is what originally sprang to my mind when I read the title of this article.)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beinecke_Rare_Book_%26_Manuscr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beinecke_Rare_Book_%26_Manuscript_Library)

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bytematic
I remember seeing a banned medical glossary with incorrect information, first
good use of banning information I had ever seen.

~~~
DoctorOetker
what was the incorrect information?

Natural childbirth entailing a female orgasm?

------
twic
The British Library has a complete collection of UK newspapers going back to
the 19th century and beyond. In the latter half of the 20th century, there
were a few tabloid newspapers that routinely included photos of topless women
[1] as part of their value proposition. When this began, such pictures were
legal if the woman in the picture over the age of 16, and sometimes, these
newspapers used pictures of women that young. In 2003, the threshold age
changed to 18 [2].

Restricted stacks are one thing, but having thousands of items scattered
throughout your open stacks suddenly reclassified as child pornography,
according to particular details that probably aren't even in your index, must
be a librarian's nightmare.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Offences_Act_2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Offences_Act_2003)

~~~
Digit-Al
OTOH I doubt you'd have to look too hard to find a group of teenage boys
willing to go through every single page 3 and identify those that were
described as being 16 or 17. You probably wouldn't even have to pay them :-)

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DoctorOetker
pff why does the image have to be 6.8MB, in PNG?

