LJIdol S11 - Week 16 - The Streisand Effect
Attention: Board of Library Trustees
As you know, public libraries are in dire peril. As more and more people get their media online, libraries are increasingly becoming seen as superfluous. We have expanded both our online offerings and range of physical materials that can be checked out of the library, but our circulation numbers continue to drop. Radical change is needed if we are to save libraries as we know them.
Thus, I propose that the entire Nonfiction department be renamed "The Vault of Forbidden Knowledge."
Access to the Vault will be severely restricted, requiring a valid photo ID, swearing an oath of secrecy, and a pressing a bloody thumb print onto a scroll. By making the books as difficult and arduous as possible to obtain, we will make them far more interesting to patrons.
The Fiction section should, correspondingly, be renamed simply "LIES." All library staff will be encouraged to add to a list of books that we recommend patrons avoid, and should vigorously denounce the possibility that anything written in any of them ever happened or could possibly be of interest to anyone.
I also recommend that we file requests to have our library's physical location stripped from all major online services that supply maps and driving directions.
Finally, approximately seventy-five percent of all materials should be temporarily removed from the shelves, and then large signs should be posted throughout the library letting patrons know that, due to shortages, patrons will be strictly limited to no more than twenty items per patron. "NO EXCEPTIONS."
I believe that these measures will all contribute to a significant increase in the use of all library materials and services.
Also, all of this will hopefully help to camouflage the real Forbidden Knowledge, and thereby delay the escape of the Devouring Oblique from its prison in the Lemniscate of Ennui and the inevitable destruction of our world by at least a few years.
As you know, public libraries are in dire peril. As more and more people get their media online, libraries are increasingly becoming seen as superfluous. We have expanded both our online offerings and range of physical materials that can be checked out of the library, but our circulation numbers continue to drop. Radical change is needed if we are to save libraries as we know them.
Thus, I propose that the entire Nonfiction department be renamed "The Vault of Forbidden Knowledge."
Access to the Vault will be severely restricted, requiring a valid photo ID, swearing an oath of secrecy, and a pressing a bloody thumb print onto a scroll. By making the books as difficult and arduous as possible to obtain, we will make them far more interesting to patrons.
The Fiction section should, correspondingly, be renamed simply "LIES." All library staff will be encouraged to add to a list of books that we recommend patrons avoid, and should vigorously denounce the possibility that anything written in any of them ever happened or could possibly be of interest to anyone.
I also recommend that we file requests to have our library's physical location stripped from all major online services that supply maps and driving directions.
Finally, approximately seventy-five percent of all materials should be temporarily removed from the shelves, and then large signs should be posted throughout the library letting patrons know that, due to shortages, patrons will be strictly limited to no more than twenty items per patron. "NO EXCEPTIONS."
I believe that these measures will all contribute to a significant increase in the use of all library materials and services.
Also, all of this will hopefully help to camouflage the real Forbidden Knowledge, and thereby delay the escape of the Devouring Oblique from its prison in the Lemniscate of Ennui and the inevitable destruction of our world by at least a few years.