Weeding the Worst Library Books • Hacker News Board

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#31

Post by dingaling » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #20

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.

Interesting, presumably BWB have a team of inbound screeners that make a decision on how to route each book?

I've only dealy with them as a customer, they're not good at packaging books for posting but if most of their stock is old penny-books then presumably they're trying to make margin on the Amazon postal charge.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#32

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:57 PM UTC

esoteric_nonces wrote: post #26

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good public library in London? I've often found myself wanting to read a reference book prior to purchase (technical books are extremely expensive to buy). Do any of the universities offer subscriptions to members of the public?

[deleted]

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#33

Post by dingaling » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:57 PM UTC

esoteric_nonces wrote: post #26

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good public library in London? I've often found myself wanting to read a reference book prior to purchase (technical books are extremely expensive to buy). Do any of the universities offer subscriptions to members of the public?

I don't know about London libraries but the Bodleian in Oxford offers associate membership. It's about the same rate as other university libraries in the UK

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/using/getting-a-readers-card/ch...

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#34

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 7:08 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #31

greglindahl wrote: post #20

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.

Interesting, presumably BWB have a team of inbound screeners that make a decision on how to route each book? I've only dealy with them as a customer, they're not good at packaging books for posting but if most of their stock is old penny-books then presumably they're trying to make margin on the Amazon postal charge.

BWB has some fancy software that figures out if they're likely to sell a given book soon enough to make it worth having in the warehouse.

I've bought several non-penny-books from them, never had a problem with packaging, either.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#35

Post by sdegutis » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

Almost all the books I actually want to read are pretty niche (programming or Catholic), and because of that I can never find them in our local library system. Only Amazon or Archive.org end up having them.

(FWIW Archive.org + Lulu.com is a great way to get an out-of-print book into your hands for relatively cheap.)

So the way I see it, libraries are good for reading what people popularly read. They're good for introducing our children to Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, or Lord of the Rings, or Dr. Seuss, or Amelia Bedelia.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#36

Post by trentmb » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 7:24 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…

This seems like a perfect use case of google books.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#37

Post by zipwitch » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #13

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…

But with your cheap solution, how do you avoid running out of space? (And if your space can grow, don't you still end up needing more hours of work to manage the ever-growing collection and more money to just physically maintain the larger speace?)

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#38

Post by varjag » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 7:55 PM UTC

yolesaber wrote: post #19

varjag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

The second edition of K&R adopts C89, so it depends.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#39

Post by zimbu668 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

sdegutis wrote: post #35

Almost all the books I actually want to read are pretty niche (programming or Catholic), and because of that I can never find them in our local library system. Only Amazon or Archive.org end up having them. (FWIW Archive.org + Lulu.com is a great way to get an out-of-print book into your hands for relatively cheap.) So the way I see it, libraries are good for reading what people popularly read. They're good for intro…

You might have already looked into this, but a lot of public libraries are part of larger interlibrary system that will include other public libraries + college libraries. Where I'm at the consortium includes most of Colorado and Wyoming, with a total of ~30M volumes. I can request them online and they're typically available at my local library in a few days.

Re: Weeding the Worst Library Books

#40

Post by mostlystatic » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

esoteric_nonces wrote: post #26

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good public library in London? I've often found myself wanting to read a reference book prior to purchase (technical books are extremely expensive to buy). Do any of the universities offer subscriptions to members of the public?

I've struggled to find a good public library here. I've been able to find every book I was looking for at the British Library, but you have to request each book and can only read it there.

Having said that, the books I was reading there were mostly general programming books. I don't know if they have more specific technical books.

The British Library also has some scary note on their website about how you need to demonstrate why you need access. But that's not worth worrying about. I just went there and signed up, nobody asked me to justify why I want to read books there.