These items can be found, but they don't belong in a heavily used public library.

As noted in studies on preservation, the ideal conditions to maintain old materials is in 40% humidity, 55 degrees F. and pitch dark. I would add, handled only wearing absolutely clean cotton gloves.

You have suggested using these works, as reprints I assume, to teach children, not to teach comparative studies intended for high school upperclassmen and college students. There are better things than materials fraught with error to use in teaching children, unless one would enjoy unteaching error for the sake of teaching the style.

The items you love so well are products of their time. Their time is not ours.

The works from the past that last, at least since the time of the printing press, are the ones people have found most inspiring or useful or beautiful. They survive because they sold many copies, having been valuable to many people. Our literary canon has developed this way. Unfortunately, this isn't as true of items from the distant past, but we have managed to hold on to Aescylus, Catullus, von Eschenbach, Villon, Chaucer, and scores of others anyway.

I apologize, to you and to the Flintstones, for removing the books about the brontosaurus from the science section of the children's library, and for replacing Let's Visit the USSR with books on modern Russia in the geography section. As they are from the present, they are obviously inferior, even though they will help students make sense of current events. I will forthwith begin to look for a children's book on Prussia to place in the 910s, so we may all know of what nation Berlin is truly the capital in that most perfect of all possible worlds, the past.