voidmoth

Moira/Mallory/Magpie/Molly

Electronic literature, tool-building, poetry, games, puzzles, &cet. 29.


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shel
@shel

Weeding and refreshing the 300s is so depressing. Books about civil rights and labor organizing have 0 circulations after years in the collection and everything popular is obviously scammy get rich quick airport books. As if the secret to being a rich person is just gonna be siting on the shelf at the library and your broke parents are poor because they never thought to check the library for the secrets to building familial wealth.

The secrets to pulling yourself out of poverty are at the library though and it's all these books about labor organizing that have literally never been borrowed.


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in reply to @shel's post:

This is not the only criteria for weeding; and you also need to consider the publishing industry's involvement as well. I often want to replace good books in the collection that are falling apart but they are out of print. If the publishing industry sees no profit in doing a new print run of a good title it will not be possible to keep it as its a physical object and will eventually deteriorate. If we can can't get a replacement copy, then we have to find a new comp title that is in print. I can't event entirely blame the publishing industry since they run on very narrow margins as it is. Reprinting old titles that are good but niche like Gender Trouble by Judith Butler is something they often just can't afford to do if there isn't enough demand.

Ultimately it comes down to Ranganathan's First Law of Library Science. Books are for use. If nobody is reading it then it doesn't matter how good it is, we can't justify keeping it. Literally 0 circulations over ten years in the collection is a book that served no use in the collection. It was "dead on arrival."

Titles like this don't get "purged" from everywhere though. Individual copies are kept in larger libraries that have the space for them, like academic libraries or the central/main branches of large public library systems. Nearly every library is a member of ILLiad. As long as one copy of the title exists in Worldcat then anyone who wants to read the title will be able to do so for free. You simply make an interlibrary loan request through your home library and in a matter of weeks you get a copy shipped to your library from one of the larger repository libraries that is holding a copy.

So like, our last copy of Gender Trouble fell apart... but nobody was reading it anyway. So it's gone from the collection there's nothing I can do about it. But I can still get a copy from a university for free for any patron who wants to read it, it just isn't conveniently on the shelf in their neighborhood, which probably doesn't have space for books that won't get read more than once every five years.

All that said, even when books on particular subjects are enormously unpopular the second and third laws of library science are still "To every book its reader and to every reader their boon." We ensure that there are no subject gaps in the collection and that the gaps are being filled by high quality options of what's available to us. Even if nobody is borrowing books on LGBT civil rights history, we will always ensure the subject is covered by one or two books that are of high quality.

I apologize for sounding unnecessarily sour. "Purged" was a loaded word to use...I appreciate your detailed explanation of the situation and the multiple pressures librarians are under. It's the overall trend I've observed in library collections that is a bit dismaying—a trend towards more superficial, excessively popularized texts replacing older more informative volumes, but I guess that tracks with general trends in publication... ~Chara

The older volumes are also likely superseded. The newer encyclopedias aren't as decorated and ornate but the information contained is up to date and accurate. An old encyclopedia britannia with gilded edges might feel romantic, but it's worse in content than a shiny colorful World Book with colorful dinosaurs on the spine.