Libraries purging unread classics. Is this a good idea?

[pscot]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/01/AR2007010100729.html


"You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch.

It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them...

Linda Schlekau, manager of Woodrow Wilson library in Fairfax County, says she discards about 700 books a month."

Connie Willis mentions this alarming phenomenon in her novel,The Bellweather, which is a very entertaining read, by the way. Her protagonist routinely checks out classic books to save them from the library's book purges. It's an example we might all want to follow.

The Fairfax library system has already discarded works by authors ranging from Aristotle to the Aeneid from The Mayor of Casterbridge to Desolation Angels; Proust and Pasternak, Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. Lest you think this is just about dead white males, note that Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickensen and Maya Angelou also fail to make the cut. Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Diane McWhorter, Kate Millett and Harper Lee are headed for the resale bin. Next time you hit the library do yourself a favor and take Hemingway or Trollope for a ride. You'll be helping to keep our literary heritage alive.

[Mountainman]

1. Who's going to win Idol? nt

[Deja Q]

5. Sanjaya

:popcorn:

[Solly Mack]

2. Gracious

:(

[Deja Q]

3. When "Harry Potter" is the only reason to compel kids to read, why not?

All those books are too old or not in color, stereo, or HD anyway.

x(

At this juncture, it really is safe TO blame media and peer tactics.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. How about this?

I visited my alma mater college, and the library was having a "book sale". What did I find? The ORIGINAL AMERICAN PUBLICATION of writings of Heinrich Heine in German, 1850's, original bindings, great shape. Six books. Each for 25 cents apiece.

Part of me was reeling with how carelessly these books were discarded, the other part convinced me this was a rare opportunity. The library would not have replaced them on its shelves. It's still a shame these books are not available for future students.

[Sequoia]

30. That's cool about that old book!!

I have an old history book for kids published in 1897.

[HereSince1628]

6. The old indices are disappearing.

And all the stuff is NOT available electronically at this point.

But DONT FEAR. There is always Wikipedia! ugh.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Since I tend to buy, rather than check out books, it never occured

to me that this simple expedient could stop that from happening.

Do library books still get stamped, showing when they were last checked out?

I really should do this - I don't NEED a personal library of 2000+ books, particularly when there is a good library just 10 blocks away.

[pscot]

12. Absolutely

According to the article, the Fairfax libraries have a new computer programm that tracks the number of times a book has been checked out, for the express purpose of eliminating books that don't circulate. Books that don't move go to the knacker.

[YankeyMCC]

18. I'm a recent convert to Library use

I like you typically bought all my books but I realized how wasteful that is. Makes much more sense to get one on loan and if it turns out to be a book that holds a special meaning for me then I can go find a nice publication of it to buy and keep.

So far so good :) And I've saved a good deal of money, and found a nice place to hang out.

[RaleighNCDUer]

19. Well, I've tried to be good about it - I almost never buy new, usually

I buy from these same library purge sales, where I can pick up a carton of books for $5, and help out the library at the same time.

When I was a kid I lived at the library, but got away from it after college. Still love the ambiance, though.

[NEOhiodemocrat]

22. I have been using the library more and more

We are recently retired and this winter my husband and I really got into the reading groove. In fact they know me by name up there now, and I keep my bedside stand full of amazing books for free. What a bargain! I only found out a couple of months ago about all the magazines I could check out. Didn't know the new ones on display were hiding a lift up door of older ones you could take home! Now am going to not renew and save more trees and money! What a truely amazing public service libraries offer to us.

[YankeyMCC]

23. It can be a dangerous place

even more so than a book store. I went in yesterday to get a new book "Lucy Crawford's History of the White Mountains" and I could've stayed in that row of volumes on Massachusetts and New England history for days!

It's rather silly for a middle aged man who has loved reading all his life to only now come to the realization of how wonderful these places are. :)

[sinkingfeeling]

8. Since less than 50% of Americans even read one book in a year, what's the

point of keeping the classics on the shelves? I work at an university and even the literature classes rarely use them. Hopefully, they have been archived on some type of media and are not lost for eternity.

[Deja Q]

10. 50% of Americans get divorced too... looking for a better cover, obviously...

:D

[pscot]

17. The idea of archiving on "some type of media"

other than a book is not very reassuring. For years I hung onto a bunch of 7 inch reel to reel music tapes. If you want to play your old vinyl records you meed to find a tuner with a turntable jack. If Plato had archived his work on electronic media, would we be able to read it today? If the world's great books are all stored on a server in Schenectady and the grid melts down, so much for posterity. Books survive because people love them. We tend to preserve what we revere.

[Tesha]

34. You might want to visit "Project Gutenberg" and see if your favorites are there.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg%3AAbout

[MountainLaurel]

9. That article is more than a year old

And all of the criticisms of the content were dealt with in the paper last year.

Every library has to weed to make room for new material. FCPL is a huge system (26+ branches), and one of the criteria for weeding is whether the book (and how many copies) is available elsewhere in the system. So Pohick may not have Abraham Lincoln, but at least one other library in the system surely does. All you have to do is request it and wait for the courier system to bring it to your home library. Or, drive over yourself and pick it up immediately.

[pscot]

14. I didn't post it as breaking news

I think libraries are in danger of forgetting what they're about. Case in point is the monstrosity that Seattle built, which is about a lot of things, but books, not so much.

[Peregrine Took]

15. I don't know about 4 yr colleges but in 2 year schools the students don't

go within 20 ft of a book unless they HAVE to.

The libraries are crowded but when you see what they are doing its all social networking, sports related, games, email or porn computer based activity.

[bean fidhleir]

35. I'm a *major* user of the interlib-loan system, but it's started to bother me

that my requests all involve fossil-fuel depletion and increase the rate of climate change.

[JBoy]

11. This is a real shame. I've just started a project to read (or re-read) some classics.

I can understand though the hard decisions libraries have to make if shelf-space is at a premium. Libraries are such an under-appreciated thing today.

Recently I read The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Just finished Tom Sawyer and now on Huckleberry Finn. There are multiple copies of each at my library, no waits. Enough classics to keep me going until I'm dead. Hopefully they'll still be there by then.

I read the four I mentioned back in High School, when I was "forced" to do it, and didn't particularly enjoy them as a result. I'm finding that reading them at my leisure now is 100x as enjoyable. Twain is perfect bedtime reading, because it's got some light humor and the chapters are short. Drift off to sleep with visions of drifting down the Mississippi...

[Jim__]

13. One thing that always strkies me when I go the bookstore is the huge number of books.

And new one's coming out every month. I can understand the libraries need for space.

I hope these books are not actually being lost for posterity because they're being removed from the library. That would be tragic. But the library needing to make space, I can understand.

[GoesTo11]

16. Purging junk, good. Purging classics, not good.

When I see books like "How to profit from the Nixon Boom", or the short novel versions of Laverne and Shirley episodes, or "Sorting your punchcards: An organized approach to modern computational machines", these are certainly a waste of shelf space. Shelf space is scarce, and cities don't have money to build huge warehouses for this kind of junk. Good librarians can make the distinction between this kind of junk and classics that are worth saving as reference.

[terrya]

20. How about purging all of Jackie Collins' books instead? n/t

[NEOhiodemocrat]

21. I am for purging Ann Colter's books

My husband picked one up at the library without me knowing it and read it after I went to bed one night. When I got up he was ranting and raving "what IS this garbage and why it it in the library?" I had to laugh, and he proceeded into town to take it back and tell them what he thought about it.

[pscot]

24. I think those are self-purging

You read a few pages, throw up, and never want to read another.

[Sophia_Karina]

25. ambivalent

on one hand, it's a real shame

on the other hand, more loot for me and the likes of me at a Library Book Sale -- at 25 cents per classic book, yay!!

small consolation, I know

[Orrex]

26. Welcome to DU, you shameless opportunist!

:hi:

I have sort of the same view--I love to pick up hardcover classics at ridiculous discount, even as I acknowledge their sad absence from the libary's shelf.

[pitohui]

27. my library doesn't carry classics for the most part

i think this has been going on for a few years, i can't get classics at my library branches nearest to me, although i assume i could request them on interlibrary loan

i mostly find classics very cheaply used because students read them once and sell them/donate them

i did wait rather a long time to locate one classic i wanted "the city and the pillar" by gore vidal, i suppose because it is not something that would be assigned as school reading

[Democrats_win]

28. Bad idea. Librarian says it makes shelvers' jobs easier/more efficient.

By purging unused books, the shelvers can quickly re-shelf returned books without fighting through the classics.

Yet I hate to see it. They don't use any discretion. They just dump unused books without regard to the importantance of the book. They do it in non-fiction too. So many times they've purged important math and physics books. They don't think people go to the library to study. The new books, such as Calculus for Dummies is not as informative as a textbook on Calculus.

People have complained about wasting taxpayer money.

[Sequoia]

29. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is on the hit list !!!!

Something is seriously wrong with our nation. Why don't they donate the books or give them away...people will take them...I know I would.

[FiveGoodMen]

31. Pretty much tells you about the real aim of this, doesn't it?

[ribrepin]

32. Libraries have to make room for new books

One of the ways they determine which books to weed is the number of times a book has been checked out. Another branch in the system may have that particular classic or you can ask your librarian for an interlibrary loan. Most libraries allow you to borrow from another library.

Check out worldcat: http://www.worldcat.org/
It lists all the books that are held by different libraries across this country.

[YankeyMCC]

33. What might be a good idea instead would be to

fund the public libraries sufficiently to have the proper storage or maybe even the access to technology to scan and save digitally, and most of all to fund programs to encourage their patrons, in particular young people who maybe most need guidance in getting introduced to such literature.

sigh...I know it's a pipe dream in today's economy and strapped municipal budgets.