Weeding the Worst Library Books • Hacker News Board

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#11

Post by jandrese » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #4

Historically I've noticed that libraries are often terrible at distinguishing good from bad when it comes to technical books. Sorting through the books being thrown out, I've often found real classics mixed in with the likes of Learn Excel 98 In 24 Hours . This also happens with used bookstores, but in that case the upshot is, instead, that used bookstores won't buy technical books, so they never make it onto their s…

Librarians aren't subject matter experts on these technical fields, so it is very hard for them to know if a work is still relevant. They may be inclined to keep the "Learn Excel Today (now updated for version 3.0!)" because they know people still use Excel, while the Art of Computer Programming looks like a relic from the 70s that surely can't still be relevant, right?

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#12

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #7

Reminded me of this old article about profiting by sniping the most valuable books being deaccessioned: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/10/confes...

My friend did this for a long time. Estate and garage sales were his usual targets, though.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#13

Post by dingaling » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

stephaniepier wrote: post #2

Having worked in libraries for many years, weeding is a very contentious issue. Many patrons (and librarians!) have an emotional attachment to books, so to recycle them just feels wrong. Some libraries have resorted to putting their weeded books into locked dumpsters - there have been instances of patrons coming across a dumpster full of weeded books then going on a tirade against the library for "throwing away knowl…

I briefly worked in a public library and the problem they had was that there's no practical way to maintain sufficient numbers and depth of subject-matter experts who can answer the subjective assessment such as you list.

Ideally one or two shallow-SMEs in each field would be maintained over a region, but that will never happen.

So you end-up with librarians making retention decisions based on what publications tell them are the "most useful" books in a topic area and trying to correlate that with check-out frequency. But those topic areas are coarse-grained like 'history of aviation' or 'web programming'. It's a crap-shoot and unfortunately a lot of good books are weeded instead of the dross.

My cheap solution: non-fiction is retained until a updated edition is purchased ( or forever if that doesn't occur ), non-curriculum fiction is weeded after 50 loans regardless of replacement. Curriculum fiction such as Shakespeare probably shouldn't be weeded, just replaced.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#14

Post by robert-wallis » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

throwawaybookst wrote: post #5

stephaniepier wrote: post #2

Having worked in libraries for many years, weeding is a very contentious issue. Many patrons (and librarians!) have an emotional attachment to books, so to recycle them just feels wrong. Some libraries have resorted to putting their weeded books into locked dumpsters - there have been instances of patrons coming across a dumpster full of weeded books then going on a tirade against the library for "throwing away knowl…

The library at the university I attended as an undergraduate threw out (3 or 4?) volumes of TAOCP but kept "the magna guide to SQL" or some crap like this. Their justification was that TAOCP had never been checked out. Which is funny because the year prior when I tried to check out a volume, they told me it was a reference book and could not be checked out. I'm still completely confused about how that decisions was a…

The manga guide to Calculus is a great book. It helps me reason on a topic that is hard for me to grasp. Someone must think SQL is a difficult topic too.

TACOP is extremely dense and put me to sleep every time I tried to read it. I recently donated my copy of 0-4 to my work library, where nobody was interested in reading it.

The fact that we both have opposite views of your example books shows that this is a difficult process for librarians.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#15

Post by specialist » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

stephaniepier wrote: post #2

Having worked in libraries for many years, weeding is a very contentious issue. Many patrons (and librarians!) have an emotional attachment to books, so to recycle them just feels wrong. Some libraries have resorted to putting their weeded books into locked dumpsters - there have been instances of patrons coming across a dumpster full of weeded books then going on a tirade against the library for "throwing away knowl…

Apropos of nothing...

One of my mates was a DJ. He had the rule of 100. He only owned 100 records. Whenever he bought a new one, he had to purge another, to stay at 100. Some tough choices were made.

My local library auctions their books. The books I donate get added to the pile. Extras are probably bought in bulk by Powell's or thriftbooks.com

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#16

Post by michael_h » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

> "Most people that come into a library are looking for a new job, or they’re facing a financial crisis, or they’re trying to do research on a medical problem,"

I worked in a library for ten years. I'd say, by a huge margin, most people come into the library looking for fiction books, and DVDs. And picture books, lots of picture books.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#17

Post by harryjo » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

michael_h wrote: post #16

> "Most people that come into a library are looking for a new job, or they’re facing a financial crisis, or they’re trying to do research on a medical problem," I worked in a library for ten years. I'd say, by a huge margin, most people come into the library looking for fiction books, and DVDs. And picture books, lots of picture books.

Looks like a difference in demographic -- urban v suburban, adult vs child

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#18

Post by grimoald » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #11

kragen wrote: post #4

Historically I've noticed that libraries are often terrible at distinguishing good from bad when it comes to technical books. Sorting through the books being thrown out, I've often found real classics mixed in with the likes of Learn Excel 98 In 24 Hours . This also happens with used bookstores, but in that case the upshot is, instead, that used bookstores won't buy technical books, so they never make it onto their s…

Librarians aren't subject matter experts on these technical fields, so it is very hard for them to know if a work is still relevant. They may be inclined to keep the "Learn Excel Today (now updated for version 3.0!)" because they know people still use Excel, while the Art of Computer Programming looks like a relic from the 70s that surely can't still be relevant, right?

A look at the blog mentioned in the article proves you right: http://awfullibrarybooks.net/knapsack-problems/ I don't know the book, but it doesn't seem outdated to me.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#19

Post by yolesaber » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #10

yolesaber wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useful if you want to contribute to the linux kernel!

Linux kernel is gnu89. (that said not throwing away my copy of K&R 1st ed)

Ah! Thank you for the correction. I guess my OS prof lied to me so that I would read K&R :)

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#20

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

There's an interesting ecosystem around weeding. Many libraries send weeded books to Better World Books, which is a major used bookseller. If BWB don't want the books, then they pass them along to organizations like the Internet Archive, which scans them & then loans 1 electronic copy for each physical copy.

Better World Books averages 1 container of incoming books per day.