When librarians from the Berkeley Public Library were examining books that had not been checked out for three years to determine which ones to keep and which to discard, they reviewed “The Housefly: Its Natural History, Medical Importance, and Control,” written by Luther S. West in 1951. It was retained. So was “A Guide to Shrubs for Coastal California,” by Harry Morton Butterfield, published in 1980, and the memoir “The Peacocks of Baboquivari,” by Erma J. Fisk, which came out in 1987. But the librarians agreed that Yingxing Song’s “Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century,” described by its publisher as a “1637 classic on the history of traditional Chinese technology,” didn’t need to remain in circulation. Neither did “Creating Color: a Dyer’s Handbook,” by Judy Anne Walter or “Strip City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey across America,” by Lily Burana. Some more modern and popular authors got the boot, too. “The Angela Y. Davis Reader,” was withdrawn, as was “Race Matters” by Cornel West. Berkeley author Michael Lewis got culled as well: the librarians decided it had too many copies of “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” and got rid of a few. (Eight remain in circulation.) These are some of […]