I feel better about all the books I’m throwing out. All the good ones I sold or gave away, but what’s left is crap not worthy of people’s time. Except maybe that post-mortem Carver book. Or that short story collection edited by Ben Marcus.
As someone who has spent her entire working life in bookstores and libraries, I say toss ‘em (into the recycle bin, that is). Yes, libraries are happy to take books for book sales, but I doubt that many people know how many of those donated books end up in the dumpster. Bookstores and publishers throw away literally tons of books each year. The fact is, there are many more books in circulation than there are people interested in reading them. Of course, if a book has a special appeal, by all means give it away or take it to the used bookstore. And if a book has special appeal to you, keep it. But the majority of books–I say give them a new life as paper towels or toilet paper.
It’s a bad library—or a bad library friends’ group—that throws away readable books. If it’s not booksale worthy, then the library or the friends’ group are charged with the responsibility of giving the book away to a worthy source (school libraries, prison libraries, hospital libraries, homeless shelters—whatever).
Cooper! Y’all! I didn’t mean “toss” as in “toss your books into the dumpster”. Last year, for instance, I sold maybe five hundred books and gave some hundreds more to a thrift shop whose proceeds support a community radio station.
That much said, I’m uneasy about taking a stance that comes close to regarding books as fetishes. If you can pass books along to people who want them, by all means, do. Otherwise, resurrection as TP — as Cindy suggests — seems fine to me.
Jonathan, my only quibble with your observation concerning library support groups and book sales is that if a book doesn’t sell at a book sale, chances are it may not be all that desirable from the point of view of prisoners or shelter residents or students or hospital patients. Not necessarily so, of course. But there comes a point, I believe, when the effort expended to pass along intact a mass-produced object no longer makes sense, and that’s when I say: Reconstitute.
No, they really don’t, but maybe the issue here is my use of the word ‘readable.’ ‘Cause that’s too strong. But I don’t know what word I really mean. ‘Presentable’ isn’t right either. Books that don’t need to be bound back together with two rolls of tape and half a gallon of paste? Something like that.
The other thing that shouldn’t be kept is painfully out-of-date reference materials. But that’s another story.
Jonathan, perhaps the word you are looking for is “viable.”
All libraries do discard (viable) books. I’m sorry to have to break this to you. Maybe when you’ve been a library director for as long as I have, we can discuss this further.
Hey, Cindy. This is an absolutely ridiculous thing to be arguing about, but, hey—I’m okay with arguing about ridiculous things.
How could you possibly claim to know that, though? The library I work at discards no books (nor other non-periodical materials) that aren’t damaged or obsolete. We don’t take donations (the Friends do), and we donate our weeded books to the Friends. The Friends sell everything they get (with the exceptions of damaged/obsolete books and textbooks—which is ridiculous, if you ask me, and which will change once they soon start selling the textbooks on Amazon)—either in semi-annual book sales or in between them. The stuff that doesn’t sell quickly, sells slowly.
When my mom was the director of my hometown library, they went to many great lengths to make sure all of their viable books went somewhere (churches, schools, mystery bags at book sales for a quarter, etc.). I’m less familiar with the policies of the other libraries at which she’s worked, but I know she’s been annoyed at the ones who’ve been lax about finding places for good books (and changed that where she could).
I’m not saying—by any stretch of the imagination—that libraries don’t discard good books. But I’m certainly saying that not all of them do.
Your library’s Friend’s group won’t try to sell obsolete books or textbooks–so are those books being discarded? Every library draws the line at what is worth trying to sell or give away and what isn’t. If a book sits in a “free bin” for a month with no takers, are you really doing a good deed by putting that book into a 25-cent grab bag, or foisting it off on a hospital?
Sorry, but all of this sounds very much like people who think they’re doing something great by donating their used underwear to the homeless shelter.
All libraries discard books. Some choose to do it by putting them into boxes and giving them to someone on the outside who then throws them away. If that makes them feel better, fine. The outcome is the same.
[...] the hard-on hope of injecting a shot of levity into the exchange concerning the tossing of books, I offer two incidents from the life of Ryan. Time: Circa 1974. Place: Dallas, [...]
Jonathan M.: I’m late to this string, and am not likely to add much since libraries across the country seek out Cindy’s advice about managing this and other important matters, and I don’t think she needs any help from me. But this discussion reminded me of a related story I followed a while back. A library had years and years of withdrawn books stored in a warehouse, and budget cuts made it impossible for them to keep renting the warehouse. They offered the books to anybody who wanted them, with the stipulation that all of them had to be gone by the end of the month when the lease on the warehouse ended. There were no takers–but there was a great outcry about discarding books tax payers had bought. In the end, though, nobody wanted to go and rent a warehouse to store the books in. What to do in such a case? The fact is–it takes money to maintain even books that you don’t want. People often don’t want to keep leftover food–so they keep it for a while in the fridge until it’s so old they don’t feel so bad about throwing it away. Same deal with books. Back when I worked in bookstores, the buyers would buy “hurt books” (as they were called) by the ton, and try to sell some of them. These days, with fuel costs what they are, it wouldn’t work to even move tons of books for such a purpose.
I feel better about all the books I’m throwing out. All the good ones I sold or gave away, but what’s left is crap not worthy of people’s time. Except maybe that post-mortem Carver book. Or that short story collection edited by Ben Marcus.
A cool idea I ran into while in New York City was BookCrossing:
http://www.bookcrossing.com/
Basically, you put an id in the book, leave it someplace, hope someone picks it up and reads it and registers where it went on the website.
“Toss it” is very much a Cooper Renner Way of Being, one that I am belatedly trying to adopt.
No, no, no!
There is no case for throwing away books. At the very least, donate them to your library, which can then sell them to raise funds.
I toss a lot of things indeed, but I try not to toss books.
Libraries, by the way, which are the one great socialist institution which I’m constantly shocked we’re allowed to have…
As someone who has spent her entire working life in bookstores and libraries, I say toss ‘em (into the recycle bin, that is). Yes, libraries are happy to take books for book sales, but I doubt that many people know how many of those donated books end up in the dumpster. Bookstores and publishers throw away literally tons of books each year. The fact is, there are many more books in circulation than there are people interested in reading them. Of course, if a book has a special appeal, by all means give it away or take it to the used bookstore. And if a book has special appeal to you, keep it. But the majority of books–I say give them a new life as paper towels or toilet paper.
It’s a bad library—or a bad library friends’ group—that throws away readable books. If it’s not booksale worthy, then the library or the friends’ group are charged with the responsibility of giving the book away to a worthy source (school libraries, prison libraries, hospital libraries, homeless shelters—whatever).
Any reading is better than no reading.
Cooper! Y’all! I didn’t mean “toss” as in “toss your books into the dumpster”. Last year, for instance, I sold maybe five hundred books and gave some hundreds more to a thrift shop whose proceeds support a community radio station.
That much said, I’m uneasy about taking a stance that comes close to regarding books as fetishes. If you can pass books along to people who want them, by all means, do. Otherwise, resurrection as TP — as Cindy suggests — seems fine to me.
Jonathan, my only quibble with your observation concerning library support groups and book sales is that if a book doesn’t sell at a book sale, chances are it may not be all that desirable from the point of view of prisoners or shelter residents or students or hospital patients. Not necessarily so, of course. But there comes a point, I believe, when the effort expended to pass along intact a mass-produced object no longer makes sense, and that’s when I say: Reconstitute.
Libraries suck for publishers. And they have the nerve to ask us for a discount?
It’s a bad library—or a bad library friends’ group—that throws away readable books.
Well, that means that all libraries are bad, because all libraries do it.
No, they really don’t, but maybe the issue here is my use of the word ‘readable.’ ‘Cause that’s too strong. But I don’t know what word I really mean. ‘Presentable’ isn’t right either. Books that don’t need to be bound back together with two rolls of tape and half a gallon of paste? Something like that.
The other thing that shouldn’t be kept is painfully out-of-date reference materials. But that’s another story.
Why do you say that? Just the obvious reason, or is there something else to it?
Jonathan, perhaps the word you are looking for is “viable.”
All libraries do discard (viable) books. I’m sorry to have to break this to you. Maybe when you’ve been a library director for as long as I have, we can discuss this further.
Hey, Cindy. This is an absolutely ridiculous thing to be arguing about, but, hey—I’m okay with arguing about ridiculous things.
How could you possibly claim to know that, though? The library I work at discards no books (nor other non-periodical materials) that aren’t damaged or obsolete. We don’t take donations (the Friends do), and we donate our weeded books to the Friends. The Friends sell everything they get (with the exceptions of damaged/obsolete books and textbooks—which is ridiculous, if you ask me, and which will change once they soon start selling the textbooks on Amazon)—either in semi-annual book sales or in between them. The stuff that doesn’t sell quickly, sells slowly.
When my mom was the director of my hometown library, they went to many great lengths to make sure all of their viable books went somewhere (churches, schools, mystery bags at book sales for a quarter, etc.). I’m less familiar with the policies of the other libraries at which she’s worked, but I know she’s been annoyed at the ones who’ve been lax about finding places for good books (and changed that where she could).
I’m not saying—by any stretch of the imagination—that libraries don’t discard good books. But I’m certainly saying that not all of them do.
Your library’s Friend’s group won’t try to sell obsolete books or textbooks–so are those books being discarded? Every library draws the line at what is worth trying to sell or give away and what isn’t. If a book sits in a “free bin” for a month with no takers, are you really doing a good deed by putting that book into a 25-cent grab bag, or foisting it off on a hospital?
Sorry, but all of this sounds very much like people who think they’re doing something great by donating their used underwear to the homeless shelter.
All libraries discard books. Some choose to do it by putting them into boxes and giving them to someone on the outside who then throws them away. If that makes them feel better, fine. The outcome is the same.
[...] the hard-on hope of injecting a shot of levity into the exchange concerning the tossing of books, I offer two incidents from the life of Ryan. Time: Circa 1974. Place: Dallas, [...]
Jonathan M.: I’m late to this string, and am not likely to add much since libraries across the country seek out Cindy’s advice about managing this and other important matters, and I don’t think she needs any help from me. But this discussion reminded me of a related story I followed a while back. A library had years and years of withdrawn books stored in a warehouse, and budget cuts made it impossible for them to keep renting the warehouse. They offered the books to anybody who wanted them, with the stipulation that all of them had to be gone by the end of the month when the lease on the warehouse ended. There were no takers–but there was a great outcry about discarding books tax payers had bought. In the end, though, nobody wanted to go and rent a warehouse to store the books in. What to do in such a case? The fact is–it takes money to maintain even books that you don’t want. People often don’t want to keep leftover food–so they keep it for a while in the fridge until it’s so old they don’t feel so bad about throwing it away. Same deal with books. Back when I worked in bookstores, the buyers would buy “hurt books” (as they were called) by the ton, and try to sell some of them. These days, with fuel costs what they are, it wouldn’t work to even move tons of books for such a purpose.
I agree with Sheila that a printed object shouldn’t become a fetish.