
How libraries decide which books to keep - ASquare
https://medium.com/book-excerpts/4ca8405f1e11
======
GuiA
This is super interesting.

It just occurs to me that it could be really fun to work as a technologist for
a library. In the light of this article, it sounds like there's room to
automate and enhance some stuff: scrape literary review websites for up and
coming authors, apply machine learning to the library's records to find out if
there are underlying trends in borrowing that can inform acquisitions, events,
etc. And of course you could write cool visualizations to highlight the
different metrics.

As a kid, the library was my second home - I'd go there after school almost
everyday, and Saturdays from opening to closing. The library was a short 5
minute walk from my parents' house, which in retrospect is probably the thing
that influenced my intellectual upbringing the most. (programming came right
after, in my early teenage years) It remains with me to this day: I have a
deep love for books, and dream of the day when I can accommodate a basement
with rows and rows of bookshelves.

I kind of want to work for a library now!

~~~
chc
It would be fun, but on the other hand, to my understanding a library
employee's idea of "good money" looks an awful lot like a technologist's idea
of "OMG I am going to lose my house."

~~~
pessimizer
It actually can pay pretty well. It's not Silicon Valley money, but it's
around Milwaukee bigco CRUD code monkey money. I know a few liberal arts
graduates that were working dead-end jobs who went back for the MLIS _mainly_
for the money.

Being a technologist for libraries sounds awful, though. They deal all day
w/locked-down journals, proprietary databases, the MARC formats, and various
systems from the 60s - and I'd need more than I make now to work with that
crap.

~~~
sssbc
Interesting - Regarding an article with a huge subtext of "cherish the past",
you toss out crap from the 60's.

For shame.

~~~
benaiah
Do not confuse nostalgia for reveration. The old programming systems are
indeed quaint, and should be preserved, but not used. There's a reason we've
moved on.

------
616c
Funny, I saw this myself years ago with a med school library, where the
problem was more severe and with like every paper resource they had.

But it was interesting problem. Unlike normal libraries, they are so digital
they run into a new problem: they have such little need for any books, they
might as well throw all of them away. The medical education industry is so
much more onboard with digital publishing and references because hospitals and
schools pay top dollar, and often doctors will need research materials super
fast when things are serious and they need to perform analysis quick. Digital
publishing is not even a question of if, it is a long past when.

So long story aside, they had to be really secretive throwing away books.
Someone once discovered these old, useless (no other schools want them, thus)
in the garbage. Some alumni or concerned students found them, causing outrage.

Solution, this whole library spent years without an avenue for destruction of
the books, because old grads and others would not tolerate the idea. How could
we not need the books? Year later, dozens of racks exist with books and
magazines not only never checked out, but not even touched for decades
collecting significant dust.

~~~
danielweber
I posted this link elsewhere but it's incredibly relevant:
[http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-
anoth...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-
burning-period-in-history.html)

Lots of people treat libraries like holy places they supposedly value and the
books are the holy artifacts. But these people are trying to overrule those
who actually use these places. No one's life is made any better by their
interference, but they get to be seen "standing up for the books."

(If I were to take the analogy further, it's like the people who only attend
church on Easter and Christmas telling the weekly church-goers how to run the
church.)

~~~
abc3
Go ahead and take the analogy further still. It's like people who only attend
church on Easter and Christmas actively preventing other people from attending
church on Sundays. Even the largest libraries have a limited amount of shelf
space. If we can't get rid of some of the books that are using that space, we
can't add new, appealing, useful books for the people who want to read them.

------
pnathan
I am almost* entirely of the opinion that no book should ever be thrown away.
Digitize if unwanted, but don't throw it away. I know that might require some
jiggering of the IP laws, but knowledge has huge value and it really bums me
out when books of knowledge are dumped. Even if the knowledge is antique, then
the information about how the knowledge was perceived and transmitted becomes
valuable to later generations.

* There are some _really_ bad books out there.

~~~
abc3
I'm a librarian. I became a librarian because I've always loved libraries and
always loved books. I haven't met many librarians who didn't have the same
formative experience and who don't feel the same way.

Counter to what the post's author implies, almost all librarians hate
destroying books[0]. But we have to do it almost every day, because most
libraries accept donations and only a very small fraction of these donated
books are appropriate for the collection[1]. Many libraries have book sales,
or sell donated or weeded books online, either directly or through partners
like Better World Books[2]. We quickly learn that some copies of some books,
either because of their poor condition or because no one is interested in
reading them, have to be recycled or destroyed. It's no fun, but there are no
alternatives[3].

As the post's author mentions in the CREW discussion in her post, librarians
make an enormous distinction between the 5,000th copy of a book that is held
in some library collection somewhere[4] and the last few copies. It's possible
that San Francisco Public Library knowingly destroyed the last copy, or one of
the last known copies, of a title, or even multiple titles, but I would be
surprised if that was a policy rather than a mistake. In general, libraries
either have a place to store such copies or can find another library that will
add it to its collection and put it into circulation or storage.

[0] [http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2013/killing-
sir-...](http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2013/killing-sir-walter-
scott-a-philosophical-exploration-of-weeding/) [1] By appropriate, I'm talking
about the book's physical condition and the likelihood that it will circulate
enough to justify processing it and putting it on the shelf, because it is
competing for that shelf space with thousands of other donations, plus the ~1M
new books per year that we could buy and put on the shelf in its place. [2]
[http://www.betterworldbooks.com/](http://www.betterworldbooks.com/) [3]
Unfortunately, there are only so many places to donate books, and we give away
as many as we can, and then some, to places that are interested in receiving
donations. [4] [https://www.worldcat.org/](https://www.worldcat.org/) is one
place we look, though OCLC makes it prohibitively expensive for most small
libraries to make their collections available in WorldCat:
[http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/a-useful-
amp...](http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/a-useful-
amplification-of-records-that-are-unavoidably-needed-anyway/)

~~~
pnathan
Goodness, I am not saying that you _want_ to. There's a limit on shelf space
in the world. I'm just noting that I'd rather see books digitized than dumped.

------
WalterBright
> Partly this had been done because the new library, while boasting great
> architectural flourishes and lots of architectural space, did not have
> enough shelf space.

I find this pretty sad. Seems the architect forgot what a library was for.

~~~
logfromblammo
That isn't as bad as the architect/structural engineer that allocated plenty
of space for stacks, but somehow forgot that books have mass and require
additional structural support.

Good thing that has never happened. Snopes: That Sinking Feeling.

Discounting the urban legends about library architecture, there is some merit
to giving your local library some uniqueness. I have seen far too many
libraries with that "concrete bunker for giants" look to them, and it doesn't
make me want to go in and read the books. It probably doesn't do much to
support "friends of the library" donations, either.

And in the future, the server racks will take up less space anyway, even with
the cooling and the network antennas.

~~~
abc3
It's worth noting that libraries do a lot more than circulate books[0]. For
many people, we're the place they use the internet, or where they print things
out when they need a printer, or the place where they rent movies, or borrow
CDs, or study, or attend programs, or get together with their friends to play
videogames or tabletop games. Or even where they learn to use 3D printers:
search on libraries and makerspaces.

My point is, libraries need room for a lot more than books. We _love_ books;
that's pretty much a prerequisite for becoming a librarian, but we do a _lot_
more for the people in your community, which is why libraries hire architects
who understand that libraries fulfill different needs for different people.

[0] [http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/how-well-
are...](http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/how-well-are-you-
doing-your-job-you-dont-know-no-one-does/)

~~~
specialist
With reduced office hours and moving services online, our public libraries
have become the primary access to government for undeserved demographics. Our
librarians are now also doubling as social workers.

Kind of pisses me off.

------
ChuckMcM
I think it would be fabulous that on deciding to get rid of a book the library
archived it into their 'digital' collection by scanning it. Access could still
be available at the library or on the library web site, but the book would not
be taking up volume space in the 'physical' collection. They could then add a
'd' notation to the card catalog entry.

~~~
chc
Is that uncontroversially legal? Considering that IIRC publishers want
libraries to buy special digital rights, I have a feeling they might make some
angry noises if they heard about a scheme like this.

~~~
makmanalp
I feel like it would be a good idea to have a law that says that if you failed
to reprint a book for x years then it's okay for a library to digitize it
forever, and allow it to be used by its patrons. This happens right now in
some libraries, where you digitally "check out" a copy of an ebook, which
theoretically limits supply and therefore limits the harm done on publishers.

~~~
abc3
Do you know which libraries are doing this?

~~~
makmanalp
Cambridge public library does it:
[http://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl.aspx](http://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl.aspx)

edit: not the digitizing part, just the artificially-scarce ebook loan.

~~~
abc3
Do you mean the Mass eBook project described here:
[https://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl/eLibrary.aspx](https://www.cambridgema.gov/cpl/eLibrary.aspx)

Or is this something else the library does on its own?

------
WalterBright
There is another way. Scan the books that are to be tossed, and provide access
to them electronically at the library.

The scanning costs can be spread out by each public library sharing the
scanned copies amongst themselves.

------
niels_olson
There is a library that still has Watson & Crick's paper in their Nature
archive. It's in the stacks. Despite my repeated urging that they place it in
special collections. The same library has a Galileo, but no one knew, in fact
they laughed at me, until I pulled the card and made the special collections
"senior librarian" pull it. Something about databases and excessive purchasing
(leading to wanton crewing) seems to have removed many a librarian's sense of
ownership.

------
R_Edward
I make extensive use of e-books and audio books. I especially like audio books
because they make my commute bearable. But some books, which may be great
stories in the dead-tree edition, are downright aggravating in the recycled-
electrons edition. I'm currently listening to a story that keeps jumping back
and forth between the present and the recent past, and whatever visual clues
the author might have left for that, the reader is failing to convey.

eBooks have issues of their own. Most of these seem to be due to the
interface, though, rather than to the format itself. 3M Cloud, for example,
seems dedicated to making it as difficult as possible for me to be able to
pick up my eBook and continue reading where I left off. My current book drops
me at the beginning of Chapter 2 every time I open in. It has a "bookmark"
capability, by which I mean I can _create_ a bookmark--I just can't ever
_find_ it later, much less return to the spot in the book that it supposedly
marks. Frustrating. But I can download and start reading a book in the middle
of the night, far from home, and when my checkout period expires, the local
copy automatically disappears without my having to return to the library or
pay a fine for failure to return the book.

------
Jun8
"Many books that existed in no other copies, many books arguably with historic
value, had been simply thrown away and buried in landfill."

I understand the need to get rid of unwanted books from a library; books are
ming in, so naturally some books have to go out. What I find despicable is
_destroying_ those books rather than trying to find ways to people who would
use them.

~~~
GuiA
Libraries frequently have days were they give away/sell at low prices unwanted
books. Sadly, it doesn't suffice to get rid of all of them- and then what do
you do?

You can always sell those books on Amazon (I've seen libraries do it) but it
basically requires a full time team to handle listings, sales, shipping,
returns, etc.

------
skittles
I donated about 20 programming books to the local library after seeing that
the selection was decades old and almost non-existent. It was very frustrating
to find out that they sold all of them in order to buy a few popular titles.

------
WalterBright
> A weed is something you don’t want growing in your garden—more formally, “a
> plant that interferes with management objectives for a given area of land at
> a given point in time.”

My own definition of a weed is "a plant that thrives without assistance." For
example, grass refuses to grow on my lawn without intensive assistance, but
cannot be eradicated from places I don't want it to grow.

------
bostonpete
Is anyone aware of anything that would corroborate this quote? I've never
heard any such controversy, nor could I find anything in a quick search...

"Weeding, even in the garden, has become a remarkably controversial subject."

~~~
logfromblammo
I see that you have never met your uptight control freak of a homeowners'
association president.

In many states, there is a published list of species that qualify as noxious
or invasive. In the HOA busybody's mind, a weed is anything that is not the
approved cultivar of grass and anything taller than 4 inches high. This
disconnect is bound to cause some controversy somewhere.

I would think that with library card catalogs going electronic, a ranking
algorithm could automatically establish a culling order for books, picking
them off the bottom to be unbound and photographed or digitized, so that there
is just enough shelf space made available for both the incoming books and the
redundant storage backups.

After all, they were able to put periodicals on microfiche and thus store more
of them, weren't they? There's no reason to trash anything if you can make its
bits small enough.

------
bluenose69
My library sells books every few years. The last time I went to the sale, I
scored one of the Feynman lecture series books for under a buck. When I handed
it to the librarian with my money, she said "oh my", realizing that this was
really not something they should be chucking away. If not for the fact that
they charge annoying fines, I would have let them off the hook, but I said
"well, you folks put it on the table for sale" and walked away with a fine
prize.

