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A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

yalereview.org

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Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#31

Post by anigbrowl »

bastawhiz wrote: post #10

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,…

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.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#32

Post by ForOldHack »

andrewla wrote: post #19

I'm always sad to see books discarded; some hoarder instinct in me says that there must be some way to preserve them. My particular experience with book dumpster diving was when they were cleaning out the office of a former professor at my college, who had been a student of Dijkstra, and had nine binders with photocopies of the EWD archive [1]. I and two other students split up the books, and to this day I have three…

Dijkstra? What is your go-to Dijkstra paper? His papers are like The short stories of Philip K Dick. Everything seems fine and straight forward, until you step into another world.

You are indeed privileged. What you have gained by reading them, is more than an education: It would be a journey, to read them, and your commentary.

I picked up a science fiction book, in a recycle bin, that for the most part belonged there, except for one chapter... one short chapter-and after I read it, the world started to swirl... "Human language had by this time, become mostly telepathic." Thank you, Joe Haldeman.

And Thank you Edsger W. Dijkstra.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#33

Post by sailfast »

What’s wrong with e-books? Highlighting is awesome. Accessible and searchable! I have a number of paper books myself but it seems odd to need to have them all on a shelf outside of the need to show your identity to folks that walk into the room with you, or to have some form of art “on the wall” to help one think.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#34

Post by deaux »

> since a state university’s property, even if it’s been deemed trash, cannot be transferred to private individuals.

Gotta love how as hundreds of billions of tax dollars are being misappropriated through corruption, state university books about to be trashed can't be taken home supposedly to prevent corruption. Nothing wrong with throwing away books, but let common sense prevail and people take them home.

Down with the oligarchy.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#35

Post by varun_ch »

ciscoriordan wrote: post #24
gammalost wrote: post #18

At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious: I think the relationship a lot of people have with books can best be described as commodity fetisishm. People see some value in the physical books themselves. They are sacred, discarding them becomes a crime against knowledge. Sure I get it, the nazis burned books; but these libraries are in no way comparable to that

I stayed at an Airbnb that had fake books on the shelves! I looked them up and they aren't even especially cheap. But they probably get stolen a lot less.

I found out recently that you can just buy books. There's businesses who sell books. Not any specific book, but just books to fill shelves to decorate rooms. You can even buy colour coordinated books.

https://booksbythefoot.com/

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#36

Post by jjkaczor »

As a book want-to-be-hoarder without enough room to actually do so, these stories always make me sad - I spent alot of time in quiet, cool empty libraries picking up random books as a child.

OTOH - I personally don't have enough room for real books, so everything I have is digital on a NAS. It's there, but "not the same".

Digitization reminds me of part of the plot of "Rainbow's End" (Vinge), where physical books get digitized, through a destructive process...

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#38

Post by el_io »

ciscoriordan wrote: post #24
gammalost wrote: post #18

At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious: I think the relationship a lot of people have with books can best be described as commodity fetisishm. People see some value in the physical books themselves. They are sacred, discarding them becomes a crime against knowledge. Sure I get it, the nazis burned books; but these libraries are in no way comparable to that

I stayed at an Airbnb that had fake books on the shelves! I looked them up and they aren't even especially cheap. But they probably get stolen a lot less.

What is even a fake book? Like it has a nice cover and nothing inside?

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#39

Post by jerf »

WillAdams wrote: post #28
fhdkweig wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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"?

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#40

Post by Ekaros »

WillAdams wrote: post #20
fhdkweig wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?'

That is what big national central libraries are for. Hopefully government funded libraries actually properly archiving everything printed in the country.
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