I read this article from Chick, worth reading: https://www.chick.com/battle-cry/article?id=Stop-Not Appropriate-For-Children I have observed the decline of society in the last few decades, and it is definitely paralleled by the content of public school libraries in my area. For 30 years I have been in a business that sold books to schoolteachers. For every 10 books purchased at a school, we donated 1 free book to their library. The librarian would get to pick which books they received, and in the 1990s the librarian would often choose a Christian-themed book when we had one. Keep in mind that public school employees are forbidden to mention God to school kids, because it's been court-decreed as 'state support of religion' in violation of the so-called 'separation between church and state.' But I had a number of them say to me, "You're donating this book, and if any parent objects we can say we aren't promoting religion because we didn't buy this book to put into the library." As recently as 10-12 years ago I might still hear a comment like this in some of the small country schools, but no longer in the larger school districts (in big towns and cities). Now, no public school in my area will even accept the donation of a book that mentions the God of the Bible. They say, "We can't put that on the shelf; someone will object and we'll get in trouble. I could lose my job." Donate a children's book that relates actual experiences of Christian missionaries overseas, including persecution? No way, forget it!!
I once got a book about Christianity from a charity bookfeast. It had come from the school library of a Christian girls school near me. It still had the borrowers card in the back of it - and no one had taken it out in the 40 odd years of it's lifetime. Our public library occasionally has a cull of presumably unpopular books. For $1 I picked up a 600 Pg hard cover book "The Trinity - evidence and issues" by Robert Morey. I haven't read it yet. Has anyone here read it and what do they think of it?
American public libraries are wastelands, and have been for years. They are no longer a place to go and read good books; now they are places where homeless people go to watch porn and poop. Actual books take up less and less shelf space, giving way to movies, video games, and banks of computers for web-browsing. A lot of this degradation is due to the librarians, who have largely been hired from the far-left cat-lady caucus. If I had my way I'd defund public libraries as I'm convinced they do more harm than good these days. This is not to say that there aren't still good libraries here and there. The good news is, anyone can borrow from these libraries either digitally (via https://openlibrary.org) or by mail if you're willing to pay postage and wait a few days. If your reading tastes are as obscure as mine are, this is often the only way you can find older stuff. (I recently bought a library copy of Sanday's commentary on Romans for eight dollars, and it's in beautiful shape.)
It's all coming back to me now. The Book was called something like "The History of the Church of England", which sounded interesting to me . Unfortunately it finished in 14 hundred and something so I didn't keep it. Now I suspect a book on the history of the church in England up to 1485 ish is not something that 13 to 18 year old girls would be itching to get their hands on. The card had about 20 lines (all empty) on it. So yes Rexlion there may be about a 5% chance that the card was a new refreshed one. Our Public library use to have about 6 meters of 5 high shelves on Religion, now it is about 30% of that.
The contemporay attention space is limited. Any book longer than 250 characters (not counting spaces or pictures) is probably to long to be absorbed.
Our public library has a great children section and a lot of fiction books with some non fiction thrown in. When I used it I use it for an interlibrary loan. It has a lot of resources for genealogy. Overall it is a good public library as all the other libraries around here must be garbage as it attracts people from out of our area.
One of the things I have found about our local library is that you can borrow e-books or you preferred device. This immediately opens the scan and range of books avaiable, way beyond the floor spoace available in the local library, and can include ranges of more specialist volumes.
My local library is a county-wide system with 6 physical locations. The big library downtown is two stories and has a legitimate research section, which is good because the library at the college is pathetic. They probably have every nonfiction book about the Amish and Old Order Mennonites published since the 1970s.
My experience of libraries, other than the State Library, is that the children's section is still very much loved, and the rest not so much. Libraries in South-East Queensland are maybe 50% kids playgrounds with a remarkable capacity to cast a spell of silence on any book loving child who enters into the magic circle, 30% public computer labs, 20% cafe, and 0% anything much else. Some also have meeting rooms for small businesses and community functions. As Botolph mentions though, they are all linked to an online system where you can book out an ebook or an audiobook from a larger catalogue than any physical local library would ever stock, including scientific journals, textbooks and unpopular old rare books, without even needing to get out of bed. Same goes for newspapers with paywalls too, which is not super useful because you can't access them when they're new, but is a slight convenience if I ever comes across an article with a paywall published over a month ago.
Likewise University Libraries have just becomes computer labs, study spaces and kitchenettes. There is sometimes a book dispensing machine, but even then getting a physical copy of a text from the physical library is pretty difficult. All the actual books tend to be stored in a central library that is essentially a warehouse. Accessing digital copies is seamless though, including being able to export specific chapters or pages without the need to grab the whole tome.