I was in the library today trying to check out Beck's book, 'Leaving the Saints.' I finally had to ask the librarian to go on a hunt, with it nowhere to be found. It has disappeared just recently, after someone checked it out and returned it. She said that it happens all the time in that section. I mentioned how the missionaries sometimes have removed controversial books from libraries. Here, they come in all at once, up to 20 at a time, with regularity. I won't look them in the eye, as they look around for prospects.

The book is on hold until after the first of the year, when the new budget kicks in, and she can order another. So, the Morg also steals from the tight library budgets, paid for by our property taxes.

There's no end to the bottomless pit of theft of this ruthless corporation.

If it makes you feel any better, one of the missies left the stop smoking book at my house .. I think it went to goodwill with my quad, you think they might need that?

That's the 1st lesson the book of Mormon taught, stealing the book from his uncle.

I can verify that one.
I read several that were magically "disappeared" when I went back months later to research.
I reported them missing, and the librarian I reported to was so surprised that they were gone.

And, furthermore, I'm not in Washington state, either.

Wow! They should start keeping these books behind the counter!

They have documented that missionary and non-missionary Mormons have taken it upon themselves in the past to remove from libraries and bookstores information unfavorable to the Mormon church:

"For many years the Mormon church has encouraged the destruction of publications that are critical of Joseph Smith or the church. The Mormon-owned Deseret News carried an article in 1953 in which tacit approval seems to be given to book burning:

"'Good-natured Sven A. Wiman can manage a cautious grin when his married daughter relates...how when he returned home each evening from his part-time employment in various used book stores throughout Sweden he would produce an anti-Mormon book and then proceed to burn it. Sweden, you learn, has literally no end of anti-Church books, and Elder Wiman set himself up as a one-man cleanup committee to destroy as many of these diatribes against the Church as possible' (Deseret News, Church Section, May 16, 1953, p. 10).

"In 1965 we were visited by a student from Brigham Young University who had recently completed a mission for the Mormon
church in Texas. He related that while on his mission he was instructed to see that books critical of the Mormon church were removed from libraries. He said that he was told to take a set of new Mormon books—furnished by the church—to each library and offer them in exchange for their old books dealing with Mormonism. He said that the project was very effective in Texas, and that many of the critical books were removed from the libraries by this method. That such a project was actually carried out by some Mormon missionaries has now been verified by the Mormon writer Samuel W. Taylor. He stated:

"'...I wonder how many good-will tours by the Tabernacle Choir would be required to repair the damage done to the Mormon image when Playboy, with its enormous circulation and impact on young people, published the fact that Mormon missionaries were engaged in a campaign of book-burning? The item was a letter from a librarian of Northampton, Mass., Lawrence Wikander, published first in the American Library Association's Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May, 1963,...Wikander told of two Elders arriving at his library to inspect the index of Mormon material. They offered a list of "more up-to-date material" and after delivering it made the following proposition:

"'Now that we had these books which told the truth about their religion, undoubtedly we would like to discard other books in the library which told lies about the Mormon Church. Other libraries, they said, had been glad to have this pointed out to them.

"'Following the expose...a friend of mine tried to find out how extensive the missionary book-burning campaign had been. A number of returned missionaries from both domestic and foreign missions admitted that they had participated in it, but data as to when and how and by whom the project had been originated was, understandably, unavailable.

"'Self-appointed Comstocks among us have for years been dedicated to the unholy quest of seeking out and destroying books considered unfavorable.... My brother Raymond was approached by a zealot offering a number of rare Mormon books bearing library stamps; the devout saint blandly admitted stealing them to protect the public, but said he was sure that Raymond, would not be harmed' (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1967, p. 26)."

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/changech2.htm

What amazes me is that the book burners don't see the irony in what they are doing. In removing an opposing argument they are only highlighting the weakness of their own.

But, as the old saying goes:"Those who want to 'share' their beliefs with you, rarely want to know about your beliefs", the mormon TBM's truly are a sheeple of the sheepiest of sheep.

Bet the amount of "anti-Mormon" info on the internet blows their minds. And now they must deal with Nooks and Kindles, ferrying those anti books to laps all over the world in seconds. Blast it all! You can't burn an e book!

new releases and best sellers shelves near the door.

Just in case you are looking for a Patterson and decide to read Nibley instead.

I don't know why they don't just destroy the printing press like Joseph Smith did with the Expositer--it would be so much easier.

If you can't find a title, have the library check other libraries.. I did that many times. I found that university libraries were more consistent getting me the titles I wanted.

I finally decided to use the tithing money I saved to buy additional copies of Grant Palmers "Insider's View of Mormonism" and "Under the Banner of Heaven" which kept disappearing from the shelves.

The reaction of the librarians was so bland, I was enfuriated. They had no interest in preventing this attempt to deprive the public of information based on religious prejudice.

Anagrammy

This has been going on for at least 40 years that I know of. Cowardly, ain't it?

Not only Mormonism. A librarian will probably tell you that thousands of books never return to the library every year.

One more thing, we dealt with a library at one time with sloppy procedures. They claimed we didn't return books, so we would go to the library and find them on the shelf!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2011 02:19PM by SusieQ#1.

libraries fall into the "non-essential services" part of the county/municipal budget. Their own budgets tend to be the first cut, and the last restored. If someone gets sick on top of that, there can be a very daunting pile of books to be cleared and reshelved. Our policy is if a patron complains, we mark the book "claims returned" in their record. Once a month, we get a Claims Returned list to check for on the shelves. But, to be cynical, there have been several occasions where a patron "finds" a book on the shelves that they claimed returned and that we could not find. It made a miraculous reappearance usually nowhere near where it should have been. While the patron gives us an indignant lecture, her honest six-year-old is saying, "Mommy you just found that book under the car seat".

As for the mishies, I try and keep an eye on them when they come in. They very rarely head to the religion section, and mostly hover around the graphic novels and sports while waiting for their computer sessions.

Just my position from the other side of the trenches.

Hervey Willets Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>Probably a little of both.

When she learned I was an exmormon, she said that books with uncompimentary passages on this subject are constantly vandalized.

Sometimes, words, sentences, or whole paragraphs are blacked out. Other times there are rbutals scribbled in the margins or the books come up missing alltogether. She said over her career she's had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars replacing the ones "mormons destroy or steal." Her words not mine.

I've posted about this before and usually receive replies from RMs and others who admit to this kind of vandalism.

I mentioned it at an exmo coffee and one fellow said in highschool he and his mormon friends kept schedules of who would check out and keep others from reading these books. They'd be on waiting lists in the library and not return a book until the next person on the list was standing there ready to snap it up. This went on for his four years in high school and the kids took great delight in their cleverness.

Some posters also said they used to take books from where they belonged and hide them in obscure places within the library.

I suggest every librarian needs to watch for missionaries and others hanging around in the stacks where these materials are shelved.

most libraries have a special collections dept.
tell the supervising librarian the situation, chances are they'll make checking them out a bit more difficult (ID or something like that).

at least keep them behind the counter.

When my twins were at school in Utah, one of their roommates claimed that his parents were on a senior mission in which they scoured their city for anti-Mormon books, which (according to the kid) they would purchase and destroy.

You're in Tri Cities too? Nice. Yeah, there are a good amount of the good Mormons here who would love nothing more than to make God happy by destroying books defaming his second favorite child, Joseph Smith.

That's like stealing the Book of Mormons from the Marriott Hotels and none of us would do that.

Fond memories of the Richland library. It's where I first found No Man Knows my History about a year ago. But I returned it, I swear!

See, that's the thing that gets me about this. If you "know you have the truth", why are a few books going to give you any angst? Wouldn't you be okay with any and all information being aired, because you have "the truth"?

The fact that they need to stoop to this level shows you how shaky the faith of mormons really is...

Book burning in the day of the internet is like spitting in the wind, it will have virtually no effect. The internet is the death knell for the morg.