Comment by ButlerianJihad

I was in charge of a "lending library" ministry at my church for a few years. Let me tell ya.

We got started when another ministry moved out, and sort of from zero. My pastor's clear instructions to me were: make sure everything we carry is doctrinally sound.

So we inherited several full collections of books in rapid succession. Some had even belonged to priests and religious. Those gave me a fascinating time, because I could basically rubber-stamp every title that a priest had in his personal collection. But slowly the balance began to tip into rather esoteric volumes that normal laypeople couldn't really use. Literally books full of sermons and other arcane subjects!

I was tasked with discarding/recycling all the rejects. There were tons of rejects, believe me! So with every session when we had boxes full of donation, it was imperative to cull the bad stuff very fast, shelve the rest, and then find somewhere to dump the trash. The manager was encouraging me to recycle, or at least not tip them all into the Dumpster, but it turned out to be a logistical nightmare to find anyplace that would recycle books like that. Having no vehicle, I had to continually figure out ways to cart around heavy loads, just to get them out of church and into the trash somewhere. That was the worst part of my job.

Now it was clear that books were not a very hip or current medium, but there were plenty of elderly parishioners who did appreciate the resource and did compliment my work, but our church was not free of prejudice or judgementalism, and let me just say, there was an angel or entity whose purpose was only to jumble all the books while I wasn't watching, and leave a deliberately unorganized mess for me to confront every week. This made the task distinctly Sisyphean, in addition to the need to constantly discard rejected books.

I finally threw in the towel when large boxes of Spanish-language books were donated; there was no way at all for me to vouch or determine their orthodoxy, and the shelves were full anyways, and I was just tired of propping up a legacy ministry anyway. But it really drove home my opinions about books, hoarders, and that is why I have no troubles with the way books are currently being treated.