<...Sometimes I buy things because they give me heartburn, and sometimes I buy things just because we have nothing on the subject and they please me, which is allowed if I only do it once in a while. That's called professional discretion.

To give librarians the credit due them, I have met and known several (in my younger, less-lucrative days, every librarian within several miles knew me by name. Some learned to pretend to be busy when I showed up.) While I would bet my bottom dollar that all were considerably over on the left side of the political scale, not one of them would ever let their own political beliefs get in the way of making sure that what a customer (client?) needed was on the shelf or brought in from another library when they could get it.

I never got one lick of grief, or even a dirty look for asking for books that would make most liberals bleed from the ears. (this was before Limbaugh, but there have always been such books. Ayn Rand did it for some of my friends.)

Professionals all the way, and Mary Anne is another fine example.

Sure wish the same could be said for many people who work at bookstores. I could tell you stories....

If the library just grows out of everybody's house, then new things would be few and far between, especially for people whose imaginations are necessarily limited by their educations or their pocketbooks.

Yeah, if you want to see what such a library would look like, try a used bookstore which is owned by someone who is not very discreet in what he buys. What would anyone do with 3,000 Tom Clancy books?