Main Library - San Francisco Public Library

This guide to the Main Library in San Francisco uncovers what happened behind the scenes as the current building went up in the early 1990s: librarians color-coding the old collection's books for disposal, with a red slip meaning the landfill. It follows writer Nicholson Baker, who went public in 1996 calling the purge a hate crime against the past, and the outcry that followed his New Yorker exposé that October. Look up at the shelves around you, restocked under rules written after that uproar.