6 ms·

At the same time new books keep coming out, either a library stops buying new books, continually expands so it always has more room, or disposes of some old boo

by neaden 10y ago

At the same time new books keep coming out, either a library stops buying new books, continually expands so it always has more room, or disposes of some old books. I think an algorithm is a good guide, but I would trust the Librarians to be able to veto it's recommendations and keep some books that are not read often.

a3n 10y ago
Yeah, the algorithm probably needs adjustment and flexibility. As long as a book is available within reasonable time via inter-library loan, the library system hasn't lost the book. The algorithm (or more generally, "the practice") probably needs a "consolidate" outcome in addition to "drop."
- brudgers 10y ago
  Inter-library loan is a distributed peer to peer system. There's no reason to believe that other libraries won't cull the same book...and culling from one library could be considered empirical evidence that it might be culled from other libraries.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > As long as a book is available within reasonable time via inter-library loan, the library system hasn't lost the book. That's not entirely true, as there is a significant difference between having a book browsable on the shelf and havingnit borrowable with substantial latency via ILL, so there is a loss even if there is still some access available.
brudgers 10y ago
I know how it's played out at my local library. The shelves are significantly less full and there are fewer of them. What did they cull? Among the the books was Richard Rhodes' Making of the Atomic Bomb which won a Pulitzer. Elsewhere though, there's eight shelf feet of Orson Scott Card and twelve of Danielle Steel.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  So they got rid of niche books that nobody borrows and replaced them with one of the best selling authors alive and one of the top SciFi authors? Sorry but that seems completely working as intended. Libraries are for everyone. Not just people with niche academic tastes living in their ivory towers. Entertaining books and regular readers are literally what keeps libraries open.
  - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
    > So they got rid of niche books that nobody borrows and replaced them with one of the best selling authors alive and one of the top SciFi authors? Sorry but that seems completely working as intended. That's myopic. It's far more valuable to have a place where you can find less popular, harder to find items than to have yet another place full of the popular stuff. That's not to say libraries shouldn't have popular stuff but that they should have a bias towards other things. If you want to read Orson Scott Card, you can find his stuff easily, not so much so for the stuff they're culling.
    - cperciva 10y ago
      There are different types of libraries. At one extreme, we have archives, with an explicit goal of having a copy of every book and never throwing anything out; in the middle we have research libraries; and at the other extreme we have community public libraries, with a goal of bringing written material to the masses in whatever form the masses are going to consume it. It's absolutely valuable to have a place to find obscure books... but a community public library isn't that place, and isn't intended to be that place.
      - waqf 10y ago
        In your model, how do you expect anyone without a current academic affiliation to get hold of obscure books? (Interlibrary loan is a significant partial answer here, but as soon as you take ILL into your model you realize that you want to curate the set of all books owned by all libraries collectively. If you locally optimize each library individually then you get too many copies of the common books and too few of the others.)
Senji 10y ago
Have you considered cold storage?

by neaden 10y ago

a3n 10y ago

Yeah, the algorithm probably needs adjustment and flexibility. As long as a book is available within reasonable time via inter-library loan, the library system hasn't lost the book. The algorithm (or more generally, "the practice") probably needs a "consolidate" outcome in addition to "drop."

brudgers 10y ago
Inter-library loan is a distributed peer to peer system. There's no reason to believe that other libraries won't cull the same book...and culling from one library could be considered empirical evidence that it might be culled from other libraries.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> As long as a book is available within reasonable time via inter-library loan, the library system hasn't lost the book. That's not entirely true, as there is a significant difference between having a book browsable on the shelf and havingnit borrowable with substantial latency via ILL, so there is a loss even if there is still some access available.

brudgers 10y ago

I know how it's played out at my local library. The shelves are significantly less full and there are fewer of them. What did they cull? Among the the books was Richard Rhodes' Making of the Atomic Bomb which won a Pulitzer. Elsewhere though, there's eight shelf feet of Orson Scott Card and twelve of Danielle Steel.

Someone1234 10y ago
So they got rid of niche books that nobody borrows and replaced them with one of the best selling authors alive and one of the top SciFi authors? Sorry but that seems completely working as intended. Libraries are for everyone. Not just people with niche academic tastes living in their ivory towers. Entertaining books and regular readers are literally what keeps libraries open.
- DashRattlesnake 10y ago
  > So they got rid of niche books that nobody borrows and replaced them with one of the best selling authors alive and one of the top SciFi authors? Sorry but that seems completely working as intended. That's myopic. It's far more valuable to have a place where you can find less popular, harder to find items than to have yet another place full of the popular stuff. That's not to say libraries shouldn't have popular stuff but that they should have a bias towards other things. If you want to read Orson Scott Card, you can find his stuff easily, not so much so for the stuff they're culling.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    There are different types of libraries. At one extreme, we have archives, with an explicit goal of having a copy of every book and never throwing anything out; in the middle we have research libraries; and at the other extreme we have community public libraries, with a goal of bringing written material to the masses in whatever form the masses are going to consume it. It's absolutely valuable to have a place to find obscure books... but a community public library isn't that place, and isn't intended to be that place.
    - waqf 10y ago
      In your model, how do you expect anyone without a current academic affiliation to get hold of obscure books? (Interlibrary loan is a significant partial answer here, but as soon as you take ILL into your model you realize that you want to curate the set of all books owned by all libraries collectively. If you locally optimize each library individually then you get too many copies of the common books and too few of the others.)

Senji 10y ago

Have you considered cold storage?