You could check out the barren shelves, but not the books.
A Harlem library branch has rows upon rows of empty bookcases. The shelves in each and every aisle in the adult section of the 115th Street Library had two or more rows without a single tome.
Though the NYPL online catalogue indicated that four copies of “The Catcher in the Rye” were available, they weren’t there — and they weren’t checked out. The librarian said that the selection there has always been sparse and then whispered, “And there are no metal detectors. Sometimes people just walk out with stuff.”
A New York Public Library spokeswoman, however, catalogued that assertion as fiction. “That is absolutely, positively untrue,” said NYPL spokeswoman Angela Montefinise, adding that the spineless shelves are the result of a Darwinian process called “weeding” to cull old books and stock new ones.