6 ms·

My first thought is how accessible these books are. If a book hasn't been checked out in years, and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network tha

My first thought is how accessible these books are. If a book hasn't been checked out in years, and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days, that's not an issue in any real sense, especially for books that nobody is checking out in the first place. I used to work in a library, and this was often the case. Our basement was stuffed to the gills with romance novels that nobody was reading anymore, mysteries published decades ago, and kids books that probably related to kids from a previous generation more. A yearly sale would see the collection trimmed. Almost across the board, you could still get those books through interlibrary loan. If not from the county network, from another library in the state. In my time, I never heard of anyone missing a book that had been disposed of.

fhdkweig 4mo ago
40 years ago, my public middle school would periodically pick books that weren't checked out for a couple decades. They'd rubberstamp "discard" over the library's ownership mark and put them in a pile that said "free books" with the implicit declaration that those books were headed for the landfill. I ended up with a nice selection of books on nuclear energy and radioactivity including a nice non-fiction Asimov book on the neutrino and particle physics. Libraries are always filled to the rafters. The only way to fit new books in is to take old books out. If they didn't, they would only ever have books from the 1940s when they first built that library.
- WillAdams 4mo ago
  That is what deep basement storage is for. A last copy policy will ensure that when one wants to compare a first edition of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ against a second, one can get the full weight of Aragorn's snark: >What did you fear that I should say? That I have here a rascal of a rebel dwarf that I would gladly exchange for a serviceable orc?'
  - fhdkweig 4mo ago
    Schools in poor towns don't have multiple levels or basements or even extra storage rooms. What you see is all you get. If there is enough space to have a room full of books, it would be better used as a publicly accessible set of stacks. The only real reason to have a librarian-only room is for books that are rare and valuable.
    - WillAdams 4mo ago
      As I implied elsethread, the solution for that is better funding. Someone needs to take up Carnegie's mantle and finish the job which he began.
      - jerf 4mo ago
        You need a limiting principle or there is no limit to the "better funding" you're asking for until you have a Library of Congress in every small town in America, to no positive effect. What's the limiting principle you propose? It has to be something real libraries and library funding sources can take action on, because they have to take real-world actions on them. So this is not a time for aspirational speeches or vague exhortations to "do more", which is the exact opposite of a limiting principle anyhow. What is "enough"?
        WillAdams 4mo ago
        The limiting principle should be that for a given ILL region/system, there is at least one copy of each book/edition which entered that system which can be loaned out. As I noted, it's a pain for me to have to drive down to DC to get access to a book which _used_ to be in the local library system, but isn't anymore, or to purchase my own copy (which wasn't previously necessary).
        throwaway173738 4mo ago
        > to no positive effect. This is a REALLY bold assumption you’re making here, and frankly until we’ve tried it I don’t think you can argue that it has no positive effect to put tons of books in every small town everywhere.
- kzrdude 4mo ago
  I picked up a fun university library discard the other day (month). This one is about Lunar geology. The concept of the book is so inspiring to me: "it's 1975, we brought home a lot of samples from the moon now; so what did we learn". It was fun to look through that one - a snapshot of a very exciting time. (Taylor, Lunar Science: A post-Apollo view)
- kelnos 4mo ago
  Yeah, this part of the article made me sad: > a state university’s property, even if it’s been deemed trash, cannot be transferred to private individuals. What a waste! Sure, allowing something like this could (and probably would) be abused, but I think the waste is worse. I'm glad your middle school was able to do what they did!
  - ghaff 4mo ago
    My local town library has a book sale every fall and you can take away a paper bag of books for $10. It's not practical for every small library, in particular, to hold onto every book forever.
  - eutropia 4mo ago
    I wonder if they could have transferred it to a separate nonprofit, and then that nonprofit has no restrictions on whom it is transferred or sold to?
    - cwmoore 4mo ago
      One trick state legislatures hate!
    - e15ctr0n 4mo ago
      Many libraries have a Friends organization that receives books culled from the library's collections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Libraries The Friends are a separate nonprofit from the library, usually run by volunteers. They can also accept donations from the public, keeping books out of dumpsters. They organize regular book sales which are generally popular with the reading public. https://action.everylibrary.org/from_book_sales_to_big_impact_what_friends_groups_do_for_libraries https://action.everylibrary.org/from_book_sales_to_big_impac... If you think that books should be kept out of the landfill or the shredder, please consider starting a Friends group for your local library. https://www.ala.org/united/friends https://www.ala.org/united/friends National Friends of Libraries Week is usually the third week of October every year. https://www.ala.org/united/events_conferences/folweek https://www.ala.org/united/events_conferences/folweek
- pfdietz 4mo ago
  In the town where I live, surplus books from the library, and donated books, are sold twice a year over several weekends. As time goes on at these events the price drops, until on the last day it's $1 for a paper grocery bag full. Those that remain go into a dumpster for pulping and recycling. It's quite an event with long lines to get in and is loved by all. The money raised is used to buy more books for the library. https://booksale.org/ https://booksale.org/
calvinmorrison 4mo ago
And if you're lucky, your library may do frequent book sales! https://www.bapl.org/book-sales/ https://www.bapl.org/book-sales/
WillAdams 4mo ago
That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage. Given the number of books I've been unable to find when I wanted them save in the Library of Congress (which won't loan, necessitating a trip to DC, or finding and purchasing my own copy), and the number of times my ILL requests have been turned down, a last copy per system mechanism seems the best for preserving access.
- rdmond 4mo ago
  > That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage. Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and NYPL coordinate on exactly this https://recap.princeton.edu/ https://recap.princeton.edu/
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- bastawhiz 4mo ago
  > That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage. This is actually a mostly-solved problem in many cases. Many librarians have great SQL skills (or at least the ones I've met) and can query this easily. Most regional library systems have a centralized catalog. And the cost of moving books on demand is fixed: a van with one book and a van with fifty books costs the same to drive between branches. Most colleges and universities have agreements with each other for exactly these systems and they're actively used. My partner considered completing his U Chicago PhD from San Francisco by way of the Stanford library.
  - WillAdams 4mo ago
    You need to move those skills and agreements down to the smaller regional level. There have been numerous cases where I checked out a book, and later went to refer to it again and it was not just no longer in the stacks, but not available in the system.
kzrdude 4mo ago
I fear that the availability of e-books will lead to more libraries getting rid of their last copy, not just the penultimate one.
anigbrowl 4mo ago
Our basement was stuffed to the gills with romance novels that nobody was reading anymore, mysteries published decades ago, and kids books that probably related to kids from a previous generation more. This is hardly comparable to difficult philosophy books as mentioned in the article, though. To my mind, the poin of libraries is to house and make accessible difficult or challenging books that might not necessarily be popular. I was shocked when I first visited an American library and found large numbers of mass-market paperbacks and magazines. When I say 'large numbers' I mean 10 or 20 copies of books by Oprah or other celebrity authors. Librarians would have it that they're serving the community by making these books available in the library around the same time they're available in bookstores, ignoring the fact that once the publisher's marketing drive is over all those extra copies are going to be surplus. I do not understand why you would buy 20 copies of one book when you could have it and 19 other books.
- Ekaros 4mo ago
  Probably because there is demand. Could be that there was very deep waiting list at some point. Or there has been deep waiting list for specific author before. Fulfilling these demands does require multiple copies or it could take years for people to get popular book.
  - anigbrowl 4mo ago
    Sorry, I don't think popularity should be a factor in library decision-making. Extremely popular books driven by massive marketing campaigns predictably translate into the same book being available for only a few dollars months later. This all sounds like it's driven much more by the needs of publishers than library users; consider that the more reduced the selection, the fewer people will come to use the library because they can't find enough interesting material to read. My local Half-Price Books (a second-hand bookstore chain) has a vastly better selection than my local library.
    - phil21 4mo ago
      This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here. Your average person should be able to find utility in a library. University libraries of course might be a good exception to this rule. But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family. And that means providing the materials they want to read - not what you think they should. It's always going to be a balance for librarians. They don't get to operate in ivory towers disconnected from those local taxpayers whom fund them.
ForOldHack 4mo ago
I was walking down the street, and I saw a art/documentary style picture of a book seller, wearing a Fez, it seemed interesting, so I took a picture of it, and later fawned on it... until I realized that his books were on display, so I rotated the picture, and scanned the titles. There were three Greek tarot decks, which were interesting, and a book, that was about an old technology. I went to the library to see where I could check it out. No were in the city library, no where in the State University or State colleges, no where in the county collection... and then the librarian/Super-genius, suggested scanning the local library database, and found the book, in a small library, in the far corner of the state, and I filled out a form to request a two week loan... but two days to get here, and two days return, I would have the book for 10 solid days. When I got it, I read through it, solid for three days. Wow. Stunning look at a technology in its infancy. The name of the Bookseller was Luma Kunda. Thank you Mr Kunda. I later learned from someone at the nearby bus stop, that Mr Kunda possessed an eidetic memory. I would have loved to hear him tell stories about what he saw in the tarot cards.
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  If you have a list of ISBNs (in a github gist, pastebin, or similar), I am happy to purchase any the Internet Archive does not yet have in their collection for long term preservation and eventual lending. Thank you for sharing.
- asdff 4mo ago
  You could have renewed that book though right? I haven't actually ever done an interlibrary loan but for "in network" books seems I can continue renewing them indefinitely until the end of time.
timcobb 4mo ago
this sounds a bit different than a university library situation
toomuchtodo 4mo ago
The Internet Archive accepts media they do not have on hand yet. Resources: https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book https://help.archive.org/help/does-the-internet-archive-have-my-media/ https://help.archive.org/help/does-the-internet-archive-have... https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-android/ https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a... https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donation-to-the-internet-archive/ https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...
NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
>My first thought is how accessible these books are. If a book hasn't been checked out in years, and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. These libraries do not coordinate the deaccessioning. If it ever gets down to 2 copies, there's a non-zero chance that they will deaccession their copies simultaneously, and then there are none. You worked for a library. Did they ever check first to make sure some other library had a copy? Did they warn that other library "we're getting rid of ours, please don't get rid of yours"?
- ciscoriordan 4mo ago
  You’re so wrong. ‘“I think some faculty worry that everyone is going to discard willy nilly and then before you know it there won’t be anything left,” Walker said. “No, libraries have gotten together, research libraries and others, and joined a consortium called LOCKSS – Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe – and people have agreements like Harvard is the place that will always keep a print copy of x. And there’s multiple ones of all of it. So there’s backup in case Harvard gets blown away by a nor’easter or something.”’ https://dakotastudent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Apr-10.pdf https://dakotastudent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Apr-10....
- bastawhiz 4mo ago
  > Did they ever check first to make sure some other library had a copy? Did they warn that other library "we're getting rid of ours, please don't get rid of yours"? Yes. They have a shared catalog. All of this is coordinated. It's literally the whole point of being a librarian.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
    >They have a shared catalog. Yes. I have my nose in it constantly. It's a fallacy to ascribe more coordination to this than actually exists. What mechanism is it that you think exists that would sound the red alert when the last library (or even the second to last) is about to get rid of the very last copy?
crote 4mo ago
A big problem with accessibility is that interlibrary loan is awful for browsing. I rarely go to a library to loan a specific work - I go there to find a work. This means going through dozens of potentially-relevant titles, taking them off the shelf, quickly browsing through them, and taking the one or two best ones home. This entire workflow becomes impossible if the book isn't readily available. A book hidden in a box in the basement, or which arrives after only a few days, might as well not exist at all. I'm simply not going to scroll through a list, order several dozen books solely by their title alone, and come back a few days later (if this is even allowed at all): it's just not worth my time. The whole "we keep a copy in a central archive" approach only works for historical purposes, not for actually making it available for reading. If you do that you have to also make digital scans trivially available for browsing - and in practice that rarely happens!
- elictronic 4mo ago
  Expecting libraries to maintain digital scans of every book they have had or anything to that effect is a little laughable. These organizations do more for communities with less money and you expect them do now navigate the legal and ethical quagmire of digital ownership because you can't handle knowledge and books becoming less valuable with time. If you are a software dev, go volunteer at a library and offer up your time to do this. Do something for your community, do something for yourself.
  - bigbadfeline 4mo ago
    > If you are a software dev, go volunteer at a library and offer up your time to do this. You misunderstand the environment, "offering" doesn't work if the library haven't asked for help, in that case you're just ignored. You see, whatever you do for them would require participation and at least some effort on their side. Some other organization could help here, but going to the library and begging them to let you help them is a non starter.
    - Blackthorn 4mo ago
      Public libraries are public institutions and are controlled by towns and counties, in a few different common ways. To affect change in the town or county's library, you can participate in that process.
reaperducer 4mo ago
and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days I've done ILL in three major cities. The shortest time it took to get the books requested was 14 days. Some have taken over 60.
- ghaff 4mo ago
  That seems like a very reasonable timeframe for a physical book. Certainly used to take longer than that to special-order something.
  - dredmorbius 4mo ago
    In 1897 the US Library of Congress moved off-site from the Capitol building to an adjacent property. A key concern of its patronage (Congress itself) was how long it would take to retrieve books from this remote location. The annual Librarian's letter details the results: an unannounced test of five arbitrarily-selected works was made via pneumatic tube (later supplemented with a telephone), and the requested works arrived within 10m5s, 8m11s, 10m, and with the longest delay, 12 minutes from receipt of the request. See p. 7 of the annual Librarian's Report: <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036735044&view=2up&seq=12&size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036735044&vi...>. One would hope that 2026 technolgies would be capable of results within at least the same order of magnitude, even at a greater physical separation. One of my tremendous disappointments of today's Internet is the haste with which it delivers drek, but the reluctance with which it provides useful information, often for utterly outdated concerns with copyright. I'll note that HathiTrust itself, here the source of what was originally a public-domain US government publication, well outside any possible extant of copyright, still only permits one-page-at-a-time downloading of the original document.
- bastawhiz 4mo ago
  You can request a book from another library that's already checked out in some cases, which means you have to wait for it to be returned first. In my experience, a week is usually the norm.
asdff 4mo ago
It seems like they just don't really plan inventory in a logical way but in a sort of rigid first in first out way. For example I just checked out a recent addition of a classical book, one of those original classical translations that were reprinted in the 2010s with some new forward I will skip over as the only thing different than the 1990 edition, or the 1960 edition for that matter. The library had probably 30 copies of this edition, most all sitting on shelves, while maybe 1 or 2 each of all other older editions. I'm guessing solely because this edition is "new" therefore they ordered a case of these books from the publisher when they came out whether there was demand for it or not, and the quantities of the older editions are much more likely to be matched to true demand of this book. And eventually, they will have to destroy what probably 29 copies of this book in some years time. Seems kind of stupid right? Why order such an excess of books? Then I also wonder if they could sunset these quantities better. Rather than destroy the excess copy after I return it, maybe just let me keep it?
- throwaway173738 4mo ago
  > Rather than destroy the excess copy after I return it, maybe just let me keep it? This is pretty much what they do with children’s board books. Toddlers pretty much wreck any book you give them. But the library wants kids to learn to read. So they check them out and then they accept them back in whatever condition, no fees.
  - asdff 4mo ago
    Eventually they will throw out the book though right? This is what I am getting at. Rather than throw out the book, give the last person who is getting to use it the option to keep it. Saves on incineration costs and hey maybe some would appreciate a book in whatever condition it is in.
phendrenad2 4mo ago
I think librarians tend to become creatures-that-shovel-books. Librarians come to think of books as this sort of continuum, an ooze that they just pipe from one stack to another. Housing the books and following the proper procedures becomes the important thing, not the words on the pages. But that's completely the wrong attitude. Books are NOT all created equal. A schlocky romance novel is not equivalent to a book by Kierkegaard, or Vonnegut, or Plath, despite the fact that they are just a bunch of leaves between bindings with an ISBN stamped on the back. So it's telling when the top comment on a story about professors fighting to save books from being carelessly thrown away is that there exists a basement full of romance novels. The narrator is faulty in this story.
lgvld 4mo ago
Anyone remember this story about two librarians (hackers?) accused of creating fake borrowers in order to prevent books from being weed out? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/06/florida-librarians-accused-of-creating-fake-borrowers-to-save-stock https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/06/florida-librar...
rahimnathwani 4mo ago
"If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days" That means two trips to the library. And it means you can't use the book that same day. This is fine for fiction, but not if you want a book because you're going to study it to aid your learning or your work. If it's fine for a book to arrive in a few days why have a library with publicly browsable shelves at all?
com2kid 4mo ago
I live in Seattle and we have a fairly large library system. They have none of the fraggle rock books. A once huge series, now gone. Same for the Mr Men series. Just may as well not exist. My son very much enjoys my old fraggle rock books, but my library system apparently threw all of their copies away years ago.
goldfishgold 4mo ago
Do you keep track of what was deaccessioned and compare that against ILL requests? Otherwise how would you know, unless you happen to remember all the books that have been disposed of?
gumboshoes 4mo ago
"Almost across the board" is a damning statement, not a remark that supports careless deaccessioning. I work in the margins of my field, and literally thousands of books are unavailable to me through interlibrary loan. I have to buy them or fly to libraries around the world, at a cost of many thousands of dollars I do not have. (One of my colleagues was fortunate to get a large inheritance; they almost exclusively use it to acquire or travel to books they need for their subject.) And mine is not even an esoteric field, nor esoteric subject. It's just that too many books were deaccessioned on the baseless idea that someone else would surely have the book and make it available to scholars.

fhdkweig 4mo ago

40 years ago, my public middle school would periodically pick books that weren't checked out for a couple decades. They'd rubberstamp "discard" over the library's ownership mark and put them in a pile that said "free books" with the implicit declaration that those books were headed for the landfill. I ended up with a nice selection of books on nuclear energy and radioactivity including a nice non-fiction Asimov book on the neutrino and particle physics. Libraries are always filled to the rafters. The only way to fit new books in is to take old books out. If they didn't, they would only ever have books from the 1940s when they first built that library.

WillAdams 4mo ago
That is what deep basement storage is for. A last copy policy will ensure that when one wants to compare a first edition of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ against a second, one can get the full weight of Aragorn's snark: >What did you fear that I should say? That I have here a rascal of a rebel dwarf that I would gladly exchange for a serviceable orc?'
- fhdkweig 4mo ago
  Schools in poor towns don't have multiple levels or basements or even extra storage rooms. What you see is all you get. If there is enough space to have a room full of books, it would be better used as a publicly accessible set of stacks. The only real reason to have a librarian-only room is for books that are rare and valuable.
  - WillAdams 4mo ago
    As I implied elsethread, the solution for that is better funding. Someone needs to take up Carnegie's mantle and finish the job which he began.
    - jerf 4mo ago
      You need a limiting principle or there is no limit to the "better funding" you're asking for until you have a Library of Congress in every small town in America, to no positive effect. What's the limiting principle you propose? It has to be something real libraries and library funding sources can take action on, because they have to take real-world actions on them. So this is not a time for aspirational speeches or vague exhortations to "do more", which is the exact opposite of a limiting principle anyhow. What is "enough"?
      - WillAdams 4mo ago
        The limiting principle should be that for a given ILL region/system, there is at least one copy of each book/edition which entered that system which can be loaned out. As I noted, it's a pain for me to have to drive down to DC to get access to a book which _used_ to be in the local library system, but isn't anymore, or to purchase my own copy (which wasn't previously necessary).
      - throwaway173738 4mo ago
        > to no positive effect. This is a REALLY bold assumption you’re making here, and frankly until we’ve tried it I don’t think you can argue that it has no positive effect to put tons of books in every small town everywhere.
kzrdude 4mo ago
I picked up a fun university library discard the other day (month). This one is about Lunar geology. The concept of the book is so inspiring to me: "it's 1975, we brought home a lot of samples from the moon now; so what did we learn". It was fun to look through that one - a snapshot of a very exciting time. (Taylor, Lunar Science: A post-Apollo view)
kelnos 4mo ago
Yeah, this part of the article made me sad: > a state university’s property, even if it’s been deemed trash, cannot be transferred to private individuals. What a waste! Sure, allowing something like this could (and probably would) be abused, but I think the waste is worse. I'm glad your middle school was able to do what they did!
- ghaff 4mo ago
  My local town library has a book sale every fall and you can take away a paper bag of books for $10. It's not practical for every small library, in particular, to hold onto every book forever.
- eutropia 4mo ago
  I wonder if they could have transferred it to a separate nonprofit, and then that nonprofit has no restrictions on whom it is transferred or sold to?
  - cwmoore 4mo ago
    One trick state legislatures hate!
  - e15ctr0n 4mo ago
    Many libraries have a Friends organization that receives books culled from the library's collections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Libraries The Friends are a separate nonprofit from the library, usually run by volunteers. They can also accept donations from the public, keeping books out of dumpsters. They organize regular book sales which are generally popular with the reading public. https://action.everylibrary.org/from_book_sales_to_big_impact_what_friends_groups_do_for_libraries https://action.everylibrary.org/from_book_sales_to_big_impac... If you think that books should be kept out of the landfill or the shredder, please consider starting a Friends group for your local library. https://www.ala.org/united/friends https://www.ala.org/united/friends National Friends of Libraries Week is usually the third week of October every year. https://www.ala.org/united/events_conferences/folweek https://www.ala.org/united/events_conferences/folweek
pfdietz 4mo ago
In the town where I live, surplus books from the library, and donated books, are sold twice a year over several weekends. As time goes on at these events the price drops, until on the last day it's $1 for a paper grocery bag full. Those that remain go into a dumpster for pulping and recycling. It's quite an event with long lines to get in and is loved by all. The money raised is used to buy more books for the library. https://booksale.org/ https://booksale.org/

calvinmorrison 4mo ago

And if you're lucky, your library may do frequent book sales! https://www.bapl.org/book-sales/ https://www.bapl.org/book-sales/

WillAdams 4mo ago

That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage. Given the number of books I've been unable to find when I wanted them save in the Library of Congress (which won't loan, necessitating a trip to DC, or finding and purchasing my own copy), and the number of times my ILL requests have been turned down, a last copy per system mechanism seems the best for preserving access.

rdmond 4mo ago
> That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage. Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and NYPL coordinate on exactly this https://recap.princeton.edu/ https://recap.princeton.edu/
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
bastawhiz 4mo ago
> That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage. This is actually a mostly-solved problem in many cases. Many librarians have great SQL skills (or at least the ones I've met) and can query this easily. Most regional library systems have a centralized catalog. And the cost of moving books on demand is fixed: a van with one book and a van with fifty books costs the same to drive between branches. Most colleges and universities have agreements with each other for exactly these systems and they're actively used. My partner considered completing his U Chicago PhD from San Francisco by way of the Stanford library.
- WillAdams 4mo ago
  You need to move those skills and agreements down to the smaller regional level. There have been numerous cases where I checked out a book, and later went to refer to it again and it was not just no longer in the stacks, but not available in the system.

kzrdude 4mo ago

I fear that the availability of e-books will lead to more libraries getting rid of their last copy, not just the penultimate one.

anigbrowl 4mo ago

Our basement was stuffed to the gills with romance novels that nobody was reading anymore, mysteries published decades ago, and kids books that probably related to kids from a previous generation more. This is hardly comparable to difficult philosophy books as mentioned in the article, though. To my mind, the poin of libraries is to house and make accessible difficult or challenging books that might not necessarily be popular. I was shocked when I first visited an American library and found large numbers of mass-market paperbacks and magazines. When I say 'large numbers' I mean 10 or 20 copies of books by Oprah or other celebrity authors. Librarians would have it that they're serving the community by making these books available in the library around the same time they're available in bookstores, ignoring the fact that once the publisher's marketing drive is over all those extra copies are going to be surplus. I do not understand why you would buy 20 copies of one book when you could have it and 19 other books.

Ekaros 4mo ago
Probably because there is demand. Could be that there was very deep waiting list at some point. Or there has been deep waiting list for specific author before. Fulfilling these demands does require multiple copies or it could take years for people to get popular book.
- anigbrowl 4mo ago
  Sorry, I don't think popularity should be a factor in library decision-making. Extremely popular books driven by massive marketing campaigns predictably translate into the same book being available for only a few dollars months later. This all sounds like it's driven much more by the needs of publishers than library users; consider that the more reduced the selection, the fewer people will come to use the library because they can't find enough interesting material to read. My local Half-Price Books (a second-hand bookstore chain) has a vastly better selection than my local library.
  - phil21 4mo ago
    This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here. Your average person should be able to find utility in a library. University libraries of course might be a good exception to this rule. But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family. And that means providing the materials they want to read - not what you think they should. It's always going to be a balance for librarians. They don't get to operate in ivory towers disconnected from those local taxpayers whom fund them.

ForOldHack 4mo ago

I was walking down the street, and I saw a art/documentary style picture of a book seller, wearing a Fez, it seemed interesting, so I took a picture of it, and later fawned on it... until I realized that his books were on display, so I rotated the picture, and scanned the titles. There were three Greek tarot decks, which were interesting, and a book, that was about an old technology. I went to the library to see where I could check it out. No were in the city library, no where in the State University or State colleges, no where in the county collection... and then the librarian/Super-genius, suggested scanning the local library database, and found the book, in a small library, in the far corner of the state, and I filled out a form to request a two week loan... but two days to get here, and two days return, I would have the book for 10 solid days. When I got it, I read through it, solid for three days. Wow. Stunning look at a technology in its infancy. The name of the Bookseller was Luma Kunda. Thank you Mr Kunda. I later learned from someone at the nearby bus stop, that Mr Kunda possessed an eidetic memory. I would have loved to hear him tell stories about what he saw in the tarot cards.

toomuchtodo 4mo ago
If you have a list of ISBNs (in a github gist, pastebin, or similar), I am happy to purchase any the Internet Archive does not yet have in their collection for long term preservation and eventual lending. Thank you for sharing.
asdff 4mo ago
You could have renewed that book though right? I haven't actually ever done an interlibrary loan but for "in network" books seems I can continue renewing them indefinitely until the end of time.

timcobb 4mo ago

this sounds a bit different than a university library situation

toomuchtodo 4mo ago

The Internet Archive accepts media they do not have on hand yet. Resources: https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book https://help.archive.org/help/does-the-internet-archive-have-my-media/ https://help.archive.org/help/does-the-internet-archive-have... https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-android/ https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a... https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donation-to-the-internet-archive/ https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...

NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago

>My first thought is how accessible these books are. If a book hasn't been checked out in years, and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. These libraries do not coordinate the deaccessioning. If it ever gets down to 2 copies, there's a non-zero chance that they will deaccession their copies simultaneously, and then there are none. You worked for a library. Did they ever check first to make sure some other library had a copy? Did they warn that other library "we're getting rid of ours, please don't get rid of yours"?

ciscoriordan 4mo ago
You’re so wrong. ‘“I think some faculty worry that everyone is going to discard willy nilly and then before you know it there won’t be anything left,” Walker said. “No, libraries have gotten together, research libraries and others, and joined a consortium called LOCKSS – Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe – and people have agreements like Harvard is the place that will always keep a print copy of x. And there’s multiple ones of all of it. So there’s backup in case Harvard gets blown away by a nor’easter or something.”’ https://dakotastudent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Apr-10.pdf https://dakotastudent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Apr-10....
bastawhiz 4mo ago
> Did they ever check first to make sure some other library had a copy? Did they warn that other library "we're getting rid of ours, please don't get rid of yours"? Yes. They have a shared catalog. All of this is coordinated. It's literally the whole point of being a librarian.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
  >They have a shared catalog. Yes. I have my nose in it constantly. It's a fallacy to ascribe more coordination to this than actually exists. What mechanism is it that you think exists that would sound the red alert when the last library (or even the second to last) is about to get rid of the very last copy?

crote 4mo ago

A big problem with accessibility is that interlibrary loan is awful for browsing. I rarely go to a library to loan a specific work - I go there to find a work. This means going through dozens of potentially-relevant titles, taking them off the shelf, quickly browsing through them, and taking the one or two best ones home. This entire workflow becomes impossible if the book isn't readily available. A book hidden in a box in the basement, or which arrives after only a few days, might as well not exist at all. I'm simply not going to scroll through a list, order several dozen books solely by their title alone, and come back a few days later (if this is even allowed at all): it's just not worth my time. The whole "we keep a copy in a central archive" approach only works for historical purposes, not for actually making it available for reading. If you do that you have to also make digital scans trivially available for browsing - and in practice that rarely happens!

elictronic 4mo ago
Expecting libraries to maintain digital scans of every book they have had or anything to that effect is a little laughable. These organizations do more for communities with less money and you expect them do now navigate the legal and ethical quagmire of digital ownership because you can't handle knowledge and books becoming less valuable with time. If you are a software dev, go volunteer at a library and offer up your time to do this. Do something for your community, do something for yourself.
- bigbadfeline 4mo ago
  > If you are a software dev, go volunteer at a library and offer up your time to do this. You misunderstand the environment, "offering" doesn't work if the library haven't asked for help, in that case you're just ignored. You see, whatever you do for them would require participation and at least some effort on their side. Some other organization could help here, but going to the library and begging them to let you help them is a non starter.
  - Blackthorn 4mo ago
    Public libraries are public institutions and are controlled by towns and counties, in a few different common ways. To affect change in the town or county's library, you can participate in that process.

reaperducer 4mo ago

and there's another library in the interlibrary loan network that has a copy, there's no practical reason to keep another copy. If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days I've done ILL in three major cities. The shortest time it took to get the books requested was 14 days. Some have taken over 60.

ghaff 4mo ago
That seems like a very reasonable timeframe for a physical book. Certainly used to take longer than that to special-order something.
- dredmorbius 4mo ago
  In 1897 the US Library of Congress moved off-site from the Capitol building to an adjacent property. A key concern of its patronage (Congress itself) was how long it would take to retrieve books from this remote location. The annual Librarian's letter details the results: an unannounced test of five arbitrarily-selected works was made via pneumatic tube (later supplemented with a telephone), and the requested works arrived within 10m5s, 8m11s, 10m, and with the longest delay, 12 minutes from receipt of the request. See p. 7 of the annual Librarian's Report: <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036735044&view=2up&seq=12&size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036735044&vi...>. One would hope that 2026 technolgies would be capable of results within at least the same order of magnitude, even at a greater physical separation. One of my tremendous disappointments of today's Internet is the haste with which it delivers drek, but the reluctance with which it provides useful information, often for utterly outdated concerns with copyright. I'll note that HathiTrust itself, here the source of what was originally a public-domain US government publication, well outside any possible extant of copyright, still only permits one-page-at-a-time downloading of the original document.
bastawhiz 4mo ago
You can request a book from another library that's already checked out in some cases, which means you have to wait for it to be returned first. In my experience, a week is usually the norm.

asdff 4mo ago

It seems like they just don't really plan inventory in a logical way but in a sort of rigid first in first out way. For example I just checked out a recent addition of a classical book, one of those original classical translations that were reprinted in the 2010s with some new forward I will skip over as the only thing different than the 1990 edition, or the 1960 edition for that matter. The library had probably 30 copies of this edition, most all sitting on shelves, while maybe 1 or 2 each of all other older editions. I'm guessing solely because this edition is "new" therefore they ordered a case of these books from the publisher when they came out whether there was demand for it or not, and the quantities of the older editions are much more likely to be matched to true demand of this book. And eventually, they will have to destroy what probably 29 copies of this book in some years time. Seems kind of stupid right? Why order such an excess of books? Then I also wonder if they could sunset these quantities better. Rather than destroy the excess copy after I return it, maybe just let me keep it?

throwaway173738 4mo ago
> Rather than destroy the excess copy after I return it, maybe just let me keep it? This is pretty much what they do with children’s board books. Toddlers pretty much wreck any book you give them. But the library wants kids to learn to read. So they check them out and then they accept them back in whatever condition, no fees.
- asdff 4mo ago
  Eventually they will throw out the book though right? This is what I am getting at. Rather than throw out the book, give the last person who is getting to use it the option to keep it. Saves on incineration costs and hey maybe some would appreciate a book in whatever condition it is in.

phendrenad2 4mo ago

I think librarians tend to become creatures-that-shovel-books. Librarians come to think of books as this sort of continuum, an ooze that they just pipe from one stack to another. Housing the books and following the proper procedures becomes the important thing, not the words on the pages. But that's completely the wrong attitude. Books are NOT all created equal. A schlocky romance novel is not equivalent to a book by Kierkegaard, or Vonnegut, or Plath, despite the fact that they are just a bunch of leaves between bindings with an ISBN stamped on the back. So it's telling when the top comment on a story about professors fighting to save books from being carelessly thrown away is that there exists a basement full of romance novels. The narrator is faulty in this story.

lgvld 4mo ago

Anyone remember this story about two librarians (hackers?) accused of creating fake borrowers in order to prevent books from being weed out? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/06/florida-librarians-accused-of-creating-fake-borrowers-to-save-stock https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/06/florida-librar...

rahimnathwani 4mo ago

"If you can request a book and have it arrive in a few days" That means two trips to the library. And it means you can't use the book that same day. This is fine for fiction, but not if you want a book because you're going to study it to aid your learning or your work. If it's fine for a book to arrive in a few days why have a library with publicly browsable shelves at all?

com2kid 4mo ago

I live in Seattle and we have a fairly large library system. They have none of the fraggle rock books. A once huge series, now gone. Same for the Mr Men series. Just may as well not exist. My son very much enjoys my old fraggle rock books, but my library system apparently threw all of their copies away years ago.

goldfishgold 4mo ago

Do you keep track of what was deaccessioned and compare that against ILL requests? Otherwise how would you know, unless you happen to remember all the books that have been disposed of?

gumboshoes 4mo ago

"Almost across the board" is a damning statement, not a remark that supports careless deaccessioning. I work in the margins of my field, and literally thousands of books are unavailable to me through interlibrary loan. I have to buy them or fly to libraries around the world, at a cost of many thousands of dollars I do not have. (One of my colleagues was fortunate to get a large inheritance; they almost exclusively use it to acquire or travel to books they need for their subject.) And mine is not even an esoteric field, nor esoteric subject. It's just that too many books were deaccessioned on the baseless idea that someone else would surely have the book and make it available to scholars.