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Librarians deliberately keep book-destruction quiet, because they know the public would be outraged. Most people do not want to write about it because especiall

Librarians deliberately keep book-destruction quiet, because they know the public would be outraged. Most people do not want to write about it because especially once you're "inside", you're the sort of person that holds librarians and librarians in extremely high regard. You have to be inside the system. Nevertheless, articles do come out every few years. https://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141265066/hard-choices-do-libraries-really-destroy-books https://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141265066/hard-choices-do-lib... EDIT: I cannot reply because I have posted too much but yes, if you read the link, it mentions they are paid for doing this.

ghaff 4y ago
What else do you do? Every year, a room in our town hall is crammed to the gills with book/etc. donations and I'm sure some books from the library itself that people cart away for $10/shopping bag. I'm sure a ton of books never sell and presumably get pulped. At home, I'm in the same boat. I don't get in as many new physical books as I used to because of Kindle, but if something new comes in, something else has to go out.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  The longer a book has been around, the longer you should probably keep it. Maybe your one copy Thucydides has been checked out 1 time in the past 20 years, and your five copies of $SLIGHTLY_OUTDATED_POP_LIT have been checked out 200 times in the past 20 years (but very little in the past two.) Junk the extra copies of the latter in your branch. In a few more years, junk all but one copy in your library system. In a few more years, junk all but one copy in your ILL network. Soon it will be safe to junk that too, unless you're the Library of Congress. Instead, they junk Thucydides. Unfortunately, this requires much more curation and work from librarians, which is why it will not be done.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Honestly I'm generally less concerned about the real classics, leaving aside in-copyright translations. With 70,000 books in Project Gutenberg alone, that would be 10 books for each town resident just for a single copy of each book. Personally, I've even gotten rid a lot of my classics from school that were on my shelves at home. I can just download them if I want them.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    I feel like what you describe is in fact best practices as practiced by libraries. What makes you think this is not what libraries actually do? Do you have specific examples from a specific library of them doing something very different from what you describe? If you aren't going to go by circulation numbers/popularity, then the main obvious other thing to go on is expert opinion. Which I think is what you are encouraging, experts to decide that John Grisham isn't actually "good for people" or something, and Thucydides is. One issue with expert opinion is it's necessarily subjective, any individual person, such as yourself, might disagree with any given decision made by experts, and it's just a matter of opinion whether something was worth keeping why. Perhaps the experts got rid of the thing you think should have been kept, and it has upset you. While no choices are never going to upset anyone, good practice probably combines expert opinion on enduring value, with popularity via circulation stats. And, as you mention, also tries to collaborate with neighboring libraries to divide up the burden of keeping the "last" copy in the region of things deemed worth keeping a last copy of. Here's one library guide to "weeding" (getting rid of books, also called "deaccessioning"), for anyone interested in how libraries and librarians talk about best practices. Although this one is 15 years old. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/ld/pubs/crew/crewmethod08.pdf https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/l...
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I assume the typical small town library has librarians smart enough, perhaps with the assistance of tools, to know that they probably don't actually need 10 copies of the DaVinci Code. (I assume.)
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      Several other links I posted in this thread, and based on personal experience, suggest that generally much less thought goes into discarding books than that. Nevertheless I don’t think your link helps your case. For example, it suggests books containing the following content should be “deselected”: > Material that contains biased, racist, or sexist terminology or views As you can imagine, this allows the disposal of almost all old books regardless of value or status. As I mentioned sometimes book destruction is ideological, but I’d never seen it written down before. Thanks for the cite.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sidibe 4y ago
I don't think it's some big secret. Any time libraries hold a book sale that's usually the last chance for those books, everything left is tossed. I can't understand any outrage about that though, they buy new books and they get donations and don't have infinite space.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Oh, I realize libraries sometimes get rid of books. I thought you were suggesting they somehow got paid by someone for destroying books, when you said "have been pulped (literally, this is a source of income for libraries)". I may have misunderstood. But sure, libraries get rid of books. Eventually the shelves are full, there's no way to get new books without getting rid of some old books. I don't understand what y'all are suggesting the alternative would be. I suppose expanding storage space forever, if you had the budget, could be an alternative. But very old books that, say, have not been checked out in many years, are _not_ deemed by experts to be of particular value (you started out wanting experts determination of value to be the _only_ criteria for selection, right? I don't think it should be the only one, but I do think it's one component), _and_ exist on library shelves elsewhere in the region)... don't seem worth spending storage budget on to me. budgets are limited, any money you are spending on storing books nobody needs or wants is money you aren't spending elsewhere. The most challenging part can be last one, making sure at least some library in the region keeps at least one copy, involving cooperation between different libraries. They work on it.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Oh, re getting paid to pulp, I did find the quote after looking more carefully: > Sometimes you can find a paper recycling centre that will pay you for the pulp I think that is probably pretty rare in 2023, and not a very common practice. That article is from 2011, I think it was probably pretty rare even in 2011. But let's google... ok, some sources say you can get $75 a ton for paper to be recycled. (I'm honestly still dubious in 2023, and for books specifically as input rather than clean paper without covers or glue, but let's go with it). An average book might weight about a pound. So for pulping 2000 books you might get $75, or under 4 cents a book. If any libraries are in fact getting this revenue, I still doubt this is actually guiding any decision-making. Not sure if you meant to imply it was. Some do make more than 4 cents a book from used book sales, that is true -- if guided by the revenue from getting rid of books at all, used book sales are probably a lot more attractive. but mostly libraries discard books when they don't think they serve the community anymore, to make room for other books. Not to make money from the discards. I understand people can disagree about what particular book might or might not serve the community anymore. And you apparently do, perhaps with your local library? I'm still interested in specific examples.
jjaaammmmy 4y ago
The role of neighborhood public libraries is to serve their community. They usually focus on providing equitable access to resources, especially more vulnerable populations. They rarely have the resources to conduct preservation of generally published works. You might see some preservation of titles of local interest. But it’s generally taken on by the central branches of larger public libraries in larger cities, university libraries, state libraries, the library of congress, and archives. I’m not sure you’ve read this NPR article, as it actually explains a lot of nuance in the decisions that libraries need to make when discarding books.

ghaff 4y ago

What else do you do? Every year, a room in our town hall is crammed to the gills with book/etc. donations and I'm sure some books from the library itself that people cart away for $10/shopping bag. I'm sure a ton of books never sell and presumably get pulped. At home, I'm in the same boat. I don't get in as many new physical books as I used to because of Kindle, but if something new comes in, something else has to go out.

Amezarak 4y ago
The longer a book has been around, the longer you should probably keep it. Maybe your one copy Thucydides has been checked out 1 time in the past 20 years, and your five copies of $SLIGHTLY_OUTDATED_POP_LIT have been checked out 200 times in the past 20 years (but very little in the past two.) Junk the extra copies of the latter in your branch. In a few more years, junk all but one copy in your library system. In a few more years, junk all but one copy in your ILL network. Soon it will be safe to junk that too, unless you're the Library of Congress. Instead, they junk Thucydides. Unfortunately, this requires much more curation and work from librarians, which is why it will not be done.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Honestly I'm generally less concerned about the real classics, leaving aside in-copyright translations. With 70,000 books in Project Gutenberg alone, that would be 10 books for each town resident just for a single copy of each book. Personally, I've even gotten rid a lot of my classics from school that were on my shelves at home. I can just download them if I want them.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  I feel like what you describe is in fact best practices as practiced by libraries. What makes you think this is not what libraries actually do? Do you have specific examples from a specific library of them doing something very different from what you describe? If you aren't going to go by circulation numbers/popularity, then the main obvious other thing to go on is expert opinion. Which I think is what you are encouraging, experts to decide that John Grisham isn't actually "good for people" or something, and Thucydides is. One issue with expert opinion is it's necessarily subjective, any individual person, such as yourself, might disagree with any given decision made by experts, and it's just a matter of opinion whether something was worth keeping why. Perhaps the experts got rid of the thing you think should have been kept, and it has upset you. While no choices are never going to upset anyone, good practice probably combines expert opinion on enduring value, with popularity via circulation stats. And, as you mention, also tries to collaborate with neighboring libraries to divide up the burden of keeping the "last" copy in the region of things deemed worth keeping a last copy of. Here's one library guide to "weeding" (getting rid of books, also called "deaccessioning"), for anyone interested in how libraries and librarians talk about best practices. Although this one is 15 years old. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/ld/pubs/crew/crewmethod08.pdf https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/l...
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I assume the typical small town library has librarians smart enough, perhaps with the assistance of tools, to know that they probably don't actually need 10 copies of the DaVinci Code. (I assume.)
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    Several other links I posted in this thread, and based on personal experience, suggest that generally much less thought goes into discarding books than that. Nevertheless I don’t think your link helps your case. For example, it suggests books containing the following content should be “deselected”: > Material that contains biased, racist, or sexist terminology or views As you can imagine, this allows the disposal of almost all old books regardless of value or status. As I mentioned sometimes book destruction is ideological, but I’d never seen it written down before. Thanks for the cite.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sidibe 4y ago

I don't think it's some big secret. Any time libraries hold a book sale that's usually the last chance for those books, everything left is tossed. I can't understand any outrage about that though, they buy new books and they get donations and don't have infinite space.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Oh, I realize libraries sometimes get rid of books. I thought you were suggesting they somehow got paid by someone for destroying books, when you said "have been pulped (literally, this is a source of income for libraries)". I may have misunderstood. But sure, libraries get rid of books. Eventually the shelves are full, there's no way to get new books without getting rid of some old books. I don't understand what y'all are suggesting the alternative would be. I suppose expanding storage space forever, if you had the budget, could be an alternative. But very old books that, say, have not been checked out in many years, are _not_ deemed by experts to be of particular value (you started out wanting experts determination of value to be the _only_ criteria for selection, right? I don't think it should be the only one, but I do think it's one component), _and_ exist on library shelves elsewhere in the region)... don't seem worth spending storage budget on to me. budgets are limited, any money you are spending on storing books nobody needs or wants is money you aren't spending elsewhere. The most challenging part can be last one, making sure at least some library in the region keeps at least one copy, involving cooperation between different libraries. They work on it.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Oh, re getting paid to pulp, I did find the quote after looking more carefully: > Sometimes you can find a paper recycling centre that will pay you for the pulp I think that is probably pretty rare in 2023, and not a very common practice. That article is from 2011, I think it was probably pretty rare even in 2011. But let's google... ok, some sources say you can get $75 a ton for paper to be recycled. (I'm honestly still dubious in 2023, and for books specifically as input rather than clean paper without covers or glue, but let's go with it). An average book might weight about a pound. So for pulping 2000 books you might get $75, or under 4 cents a book. If any libraries are in fact getting this revenue, I still doubt this is actually guiding any decision-making. Not sure if you meant to imply it was. Some do make more than 4 cents a book from used book sales, that is true -- if guided by the revenue from getting rid of books at all, used book sales are probably a lot more attractive. but mostly libraries discard books when they don't think they serve the community anymore, to make room for other books. Not to make money from the discards. I understand people can disagree about what particular book might or might not serve the community anymore. And you apparently do, perhaps with your local library? I'm still interested in specific examples.

jjaaammmmy 4y ago

The role of neighborhood public libraries is to serve their community. They usually focus on providing equitable access to resources, especially more vulnerable populations. They rarely have the resources to conduct preservation of generally published works. You might see some preservation of titles of local interest. But it’s generally taken on by the central branches of larger public libraries in larger cities, university libraries, state libraries, the library of congress, and archives. I’m not sure you’ve read this NPR article, as it actually explains a lot of nuance in the decisions that libraries need to make when discarding books.