Christopher Bottoms sent me a nice note with a great idea the other day. He asked his local library to stock a copy of Modern Perl: The Book. They did.

Now anyone browsing the programming section has the opportunity to see Perl 5 in its full glory circa 2010, not the Perl 4-on-the-web mess that too many other programming books promote.

Here's where you come in.

What if everyone reading this put in a purchase request to the local public or school library for a copy of Modern Perl and Effective Perl Programming? (Enterprising readers and bibliophiles might even donate copies; Onyx Neon does that for the local library system.)

Certainly spreading around the electronic versions of these books far and wide (especially when available for free as is Modern Perl) helps the current generation of Perl novices, but we also need to reach people who aren't in touch with the wider Perl community and help them see how to write code well in 2010 and beyond.