A dumpster arrived behind my university's library • Hacker News Board

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#21

Post by andrewla » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

SMV279438 wrote: post #12

I was at UVU recently with some time to spare, looking for old bound magazines just for some browsing. Decades ago there were rows and rows of bookshelves, with these bound magazines, going back to the 1880's. It was so interesting to look through them. But now there was nothing, zippo, left of that. Just huge areas with completely empty shelves. Apparently it happened fairly recently, and the bookshelves hadn't been…

I have even experienced this in my personal life -- I like in NYC and when I moved here I had to get rid of a ton of books. The ones that I could not bring myself to part with ended up in boxes in my parent's basement where they remain to this day.

Many of my fondest memories growing up was browsing the bookshelves in my childhood home, discovering books that I remember to this day. Now I read almost exclusively on my kindle and the browsing experience is just so terrible. I feel I have failed my children in a real way by not giving them access to this.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#22

Post by WillAdams » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

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,…

That only works if all the libraries coordinate to determine which one will hold the last copy, and if the expense of moving such books around on request does not exceed that of storage.

Given the number of books I've been unable to find when I wanted them save in the Library of Congress (which won't loan, necessitating a trip to DC, or finding and purchasing my own copy), and the number of times my ILL requests have been turned down, a last copy per system mechanism seems the best for preserving access.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#23

Post by kzrdude » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

fhdkweig wrote: post #13

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,…

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…

I picked up a fun university library discard the other day (month). This one is about Lunar geology. The concept of the book is so inspiring to me: "it's 1975, we brought home a lot of samples from the moon now; so what did we learn". It was fun to look through that one - a snapshot of a very exciting time.

(Taylor, Lunar Science: A post-Apollo view)

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#24

Post by ciscoriordan » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

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.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#25

Post by kzrdude » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

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,…

I fear that the availability of e-books will lead to more libraries getting rid of their last copy, not just the penultimate one.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#26

Post by fhdkweig » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

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?'

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.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#27

Post by the_af » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

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 don't know whether to call it fetishism, which has a negative undertone to me.

But I do love physical books. Even unimposing books, I like reading them but also touching them, their smell, their covers. And for art books, I think it goes without saying that the experience of the digital version is markedly different to the physical version.

I love going to a used books store and simply perusing their shelves, occasionally buying something, and a digital library simply cannot replicate this.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#28

Post by WillAdams » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

fhdkweig wrote: post #26

WillAdams wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?'

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.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#29

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

Honestly, I think part of the problem is that around the time librarians rebranded themselves as 'information scientists' they got a bit carried away about how special they were and fell in love with the power of administration - so much more exciting than merely curating books selected by other people.

Re: A dumpster arrived behind my university's library

#30

Post by hcayless » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

On the one hand, I empathize with the desire to keep as many books as we can, but on the other, librarians have to practice collection management, and they have to do it in the context of dropping budgets and greater demands for student meeting and study space. What do you expect to happen? Faculty often don’t have any idea how the systems that support them actually function, but things have to actually be made to work.