I love rampant cluelessness in the afternoon

[cedarlibrarian]

Idiot.When a resident of Jersey City learned that books were being weeded from the Jersey City Free Public Library, he took his oh-so-deep concerns to the town council

Comments

[loupnoir]

Is there any way to find out what's being weeded out? Do the libraries ever put these books up on the 'net or wherever to generate a little cash? I've been looking for several "old" books.

Mmmm, books!

[capt_pituitary]

The Madison libraries would often have "book sales" where decomissioned books were sold off. But having a book sale also takes time and effort - something a free library has both of in short supply.

[princess_poddy]

My library sometimes puts books in decent shape up for sale on various little corners of the internet, or in a FOL booksale. Books that are in awful shape, or are so old that the information in them is more harmful than helpful (astronomy books from before the moon landing, medical texts from 30 years ago) just sort of...disappear.

[capt_pituitary]

I have a tattered 1960's paperback (sans paper and back) copy of a book on dinosaurs I'm sure he'd like. Growing up with a librarian mom, I'm all for pulling crap off the shelves. Those books have a sort of negative decay curve. They stay good for a while, but once a book starts to break down, it goes to hell faster than other things that go to hell (sorry, the analogy fell apart there).

I do like the fact that the article spent time making the guy look like an ass for not going to the library first.

[faerie_writer]

If someone gets upset about weeding, I wonder what they'd do if they knew what book stores did with paperback returns? Garbage. And not recycling garbage (like you'd think) but garbage garbage.

[anemonerose]

Actually, B&N has started recycling paperback strips. It started about three months ago, I think. Caused major problems. They do magazine recycling, too, now. So instead of throwing everything into the trash the receiving manager has to box them all up and keep them until the recycling pickup day (ours was Thursday, I think). Then UPS takes them away and deposits them at a recycling center.

I say it certainly took them long enough to come up with some way to help. Now if something could be done with the cafe food that goes out each night....

[faerie_writer]

That's good to know. There's hope for the world yet. :)

[florahart]

Heh. Mine doesn't. We keep trying to get approval to, and we have on a small scale succeeded (we YAY OMG YAY got to toss some of the stuff we have online access to, like runs of 50 years of abstracts, in the last few years), but damn, I'd like to chuck things like obsolete textbooks, or at least move them into more archival collections.

Course, academic libraries have the irritating issue of professional organizations caring how many volumes you have, which isn't necessarily relevant to how many useful volumes you have, so.

Hm. Maybe it's time to write another PLEASE can we dump shit letter to admin.

[lauriegilbert]

Sometimes in academic libraries it's nice to have a historical perspective on an issue - but yeah. You have to be able to toss something out once in a while!! I just spent 8 hours weeding, and the library is all the better for it, I'm sure. *hugs*

[cedarlibrarian]

Did you see Melissa Rabey's response to the article at Pop Goes the Library? MADE OF AWESOME.

Yes, see, I have no desire to live in Brooklyn (and even worse, I LIKE living in North Jersey, quelle horreur) and I wear J. Crew and listen to classic rock. Does that mean I am not cool enough to be a librarian anymore?

[cedarlibrarian]

My mom knit my house scarf! But that has more to do with my complete dumbosity at anything craft-related and less to do with my mom being a hipster. Which she isn't, she's just good at knitting.