Library policy: For a book to be removed from circulation, the book must be badly damaged and must not have been chec...

Skylar on August 2, 2020

@disniaperera, happy to help!

The correct answer is (B) "Paper Flowers has been checked out within the last year."

The passage tells us that for a book to be removed from circulation, it must be badly damaged and not checked out for over two years. Additionally, books that were written by local authors or are of local historical significance can be removed from circulation only if they have not been checked out for over three years. We are looking to justify the application of this policy in determining that Paper Flowers should not be removed from circulation. Answer choice (B) tells us that the book in question was checked out within the last year, so it does not meet the criteria in either sentence to be removed from circulation.

(A) is incorrect because the first sentence tells us that being badly damaged is part of the criteria for being removed from circulation.
(C) is incorrect because we don't have enough information. According to the first sentence, this could mean that the book meets some of the criteria for being removed from circulation. Yet according to the second sentence, this could mean that the book should not be removed from circulation if it was written by a local author or of local historical significance. Since we don't know if the book was written by a local author or is of local historical significance, we don't know enough to say.
(D) is incorrect because we don't have enough information. We don't know if the book was checked out within the last three years or not, so yet again we don't know enough to say.
(E) is incorrect for the same reason that (D) is.

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!

Kallie-Brown on January 5, 2022

can someone help me with the diagramming here? When we got to the second condition for removing books from circulation, there is the word ONLY and IF but multiple sets of criteria for the sufficient. Not sure if I have this right.

Ravi on February 11, 2022

The second sentence is definitely weird, but we can diagram it as an "only if" statement.

The first sentence's diagram:

RB-->BD and 2Y

The second sentence's diagram:

RB with LA or SLH-->3Y

The conclusion tells us that Paper Flowers shouldn't be removed from circulation.

Taking the contrapositive of the statements we diagrammed, we get

Not BD or not 2Y-->not RB

Not 3Y-->not RB with LA or SLH

Looking at these two statements, we can see that we'd never be able to remove a book that's been checked out within the last two years, regardless of what it's condition or local significance is. An answer choice that tells us that Paper Flowers has been checked out in the last two years would guarantee the application of the policy in the manner we're looking for. This is exactly what we get with B, so it's the correct answer choice.