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A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

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Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#131

Post by rmason »

Mu sister and I gave my late parents sizeable library to the East Lansing public library, a place the entire family adored. They gave us a document that detailed that most of the books would be sold and the money would be used to support the library. We were OK with that and knew in advance that would happen. They have two large sales a year and receive more money than if they just sold them to a broker and the books stay in the community.

This doesn't happen everywhere. I have an old friend who like me is a fan of Michigan history. Every time he bought a book on his rural county or its towns he'd give a copy to his local library. Twenty years in he found out they were just selling them to brokers for ten to twenty percent of the cover price. Now he gives the list price of the book to the library with the understanding they use it for books of history.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#132

Post by Blackthorn »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #99
elictronic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you…

> 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 he…

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.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#133

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

bastawhiz wrote: post #115
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.…

> 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.

>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?

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#134

Post by FiatLuxDave »

The Great Pulping is the name, or rather names, that modern historians have given to two legendary events which were supposed to have occured early in the Confusion Era. The first of these events was when libraries converted from a primarly paper-based form of information storage to a digital form. A majority of library book collections were scanned, digitized, and then once the information was stored in digital forms, the books were sold to be pulped in order to free up room for library patrons to use the new system more effectively. Of course, the librarians could not know what was going to happen in the future to all this information, what with the viruses, cross-copying, AI hallucinations, archival rivalries, meme wars, and all the other diverse information-distorting causes of the Confusion.

The second event refers to what happened to the librarians who had been responsible for this decision, when the full effects of it became evident.

- A legendarium of the Confusion Era, by Franklin Duane, 192 PCE Edition

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#135

Post by themaninthedark »

kelnos wrote: post #89
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…

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!

They don't have surplus sales?

I know the universe I went to did. Price it all at a penny each.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#136

Post by Amezarak »

bastawhiz wrote: post #108
anigbrowl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

My local library wasn't meant for academics, but the problem is exactly the same. In fact, I'd expect a library with those kinds of books to be more amenable to trimming the collection: you often don't have a romance novel in mind, you browse for one that piques your interest. I'd be surprised if anyone was actively browsing shelves for philosophy books that seemed fun. That's the sort of stuff you go to the card cat…

That actually is not at all why most American libraries were founded. They were very explicit about this and it was not so people would have fun books to read.

If we needed public entertainment centers, then let's be clear what they are and advertise them as such. Personally I have no interest in the public funding of entertainment.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#137

Post by Amezarak »

phil21 wrote: post #73
anigbrowl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

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 material…

> 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.

Why should I support a public entertainment center? The original American libraries were created to make valuable and educational works accessible to the public, not pulp. Library systems all over the country have discarded most of this stuff in favor of political, romance, mysteries and kids books. Abandoning their original mission is exactly why their public support has collapsed. Nobody cares about a place for homeless people to browse the Internet or to check out video games and movies.

> But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family.

"Reading" is already maximally accessible, nobody needs a library to do this. Kids are reading reams and reams of web fiction. If anything, the increasingly low quality of library fare is related to the poor reading level of Americans generally - children's books have become especially atrocious, but even pulp mystery fiction is written on a very low reading level. “We have to get them to READ” is a completely pointless and meaningless goal if the public benefit is to keep up romance fiction publisher profits.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#138

Post by kristjansson »

ghaff wrote: post #104
kristjansson wrote: post #17

> the shelves were being cleared to make space—not for more books but for space itself. ... The new library has four floors. Two of them feature books Despite the frenzy of building at most American universities, the library is forced to serve dual purpose as space for study and collaboration as well as repository of printed material. The collection is not managed on merely its own merits, but subordinated to the oth…

Even going back decades, I recall major US university libraries served a dual function as having books, reference librarians, and serving as study and group work spaces. Maybe it's changed a bit but it's not new.

Dual use is definitely not a new thing; sacrificing the ostensible primary use for the secondary seems to raise the author's ire (and mine).

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#139

Post by e15ctr0n »

eutropia wrote: post #95
kelnos wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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?

Many libraries have a Friends organization that receives books culled from the library's collections. 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_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

National Friends of Libraries Week is usually the third week of October every year. https://www.ala.org/united/events_conferences/folweek

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#140

Post by throwaway173738 »

jerf wrote: post #39
WillAdams wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

> 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.

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