How libraries decide which books to keep (2014) | Hacker News Reader

How libraries decide which books to keep (2014)

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78 pointsTomte23 comments

I find in fundamental sciences, sometime newer editions of book are not better, especially if you have a book where the first edition was like 100 years ago, then it build up a reputation (because it was good), next edition were getting better and better. Then the person who made these new editions retires/dies and somebody incompetent takes over, tries to give the book a 'new' organisation, and it turns into a big mess.

I remember when I asked a prof for a book recommendation, and he warmly recommended a title and author. Got the book from the library and it was a mess. Years later I saw an older edition (which the prof studied as a student) and it was beautiful. If you just flip through the new edition one the flaws are not obvious immediately.

The difference in quality between a (inflation adjusted) £99 book from 1962 and a today is depressingly bad. Print quality, that is, most old textbooks I've read are rubbish pedagogically.

Luckily we now have Library Genesis, which didn't exist in 1962.

They really are rubbish pedagogically. I remember me trying to grasp physics from Mir (the Soviet publisher) but the book was basically a compendium of hard as hell exercises with barely any explanation.

Had a much better time with Tipler’s modern physics book later on.

Well is it about time, or culture? I mean Bergmann Schaefer was always good, wasnt it. Anyhow I am curious what book exactly from Mir did you read? Also one of my co-students was from Russia (he was from a gifted program) and what a bit shocked me that for them to learn mechanics the study Landau-Lifshitz vol 1 at age 14.

Both, I guess, because they're correlated. Certainly culture plays a big part. The USSR days were intense for science and nationalism. I guess those books were just another reflex of the space race mentality that stuck for a while.

I don't remember which Mir books I've read exactly, but I'm almost sure two of them were Irodov's Fundamental Laws of Mechanics and Saveliev's General Course. Maybe I was just too immature, but that thing was way too heavy for a standard high-schooler.

I just had a look. Savelievs looks more like a course for university.

However they do it, somethings there are tragedies.

I'd been checking out a hardbound original edition of our county's history, published in 1882. History as of 1882, which included stories back to the first settler in the area. Used it for stories (was a Scout leader) that had names and places that would resonate with local people. Our ancestors, recognizable as families still here today taking interesting, sometimes epic action.

Then one day, it was gone. Sold in the library's purged-book sale, probably for $1. Some well-meaning shelf-optimizer just looked at the checkout frequency or some other defensible metric, and it came up "toss".

If a library can't curate our local history, unavailable anywhere else in the world from any source, I call that a total fail.

I discontinued my library card, and have never been back. It was disheartening, disillusioning, heartbreaking. To realize (what had been going on for some time) that a library was no longer a place to keep books. It was a circulation machine for juvenile fiction and romance novels. Something like a dentist's waiting room, writ large.

Btw, the book was probably worth hundreds. Nothing at the book sale sells for over $5. So clearly the library had no idea what they had.

Books like that should be preserved by the local historical society. Not saying that the library shouldn’t, just that there are often other places to look to find information like this.

Yeah I've been looking online since yesterday. I found modern print-on-demand text-only copies in two historical societies (not a member). Then exactly one original copy for sale, which is on its way to me now!

For what it's worth, and just from a quick search, "CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries" is pretty unambiguous about the subject of local history and mentions that items like that should be kept as a specific exception to any other metrics or guidelines several times: "Retain local history except when the item is shabby and beyond repair." -- https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ld/pubs/crew/

So, what you've described is a textbook example of what a library should not do.

One huge problem with the CREW formula is that not every book which is read is checked out. This is particularly a problem when there is a cluster of good books together, which makes doing research in the library much easier than taking the books home. I spent literally weeks (maybe months) in the QC 790 section of the Dirac library and never once checked out a book, but I can name you the authors of many of those books off the top of my head: Artsimovich, Miyamoto, Trivelpiece, Stacey, etc.

Sure, if you know that the library is planning on getting rid of a book you love, you can check it out to let them know they should keep it. But how is a library user supposed to know which books the library is planning on getting rid of? Should I check out the entire QC 790 section?

Many times I have had the experience of going back to a library to check something in a book I had read before, only to find that book is gone. At that point its too late. You can't even buy the book from them. It's just gone.

Some university libraries say that whatever books you use while researching, you should drop into the book-return machine (or returned to library staff at the desk) even if they were never checked out. That way, the computer system still gets a record that the book was used.

One of the reasons why libraries have signs that say “Please do not reshelve books.”

After you use a book, leave it on one of the carts.

As someone living far off in India with a really small number of libraries and even smaller number of updated books - this is a fascinating read.

Besides covid, do people frequent libraries even today?

I haven’t regularly used a library since I was in school. My spouse “checks out” audiobooks online from the local library.

I work for a public library. Yes, people still frequent libraries.

It probably differs by community and country but in Ireland at least I can say that public libraries are quite busy and provide a popular service.

Some recent stats for Ireland: https://www.gov.ie/en/policy-information/7468fd-public-libra...

And a look at the international picture: https://librarymap.ifla.org/

The Washington, DC, libraries are not great, but they generally had plenty of people when I looked into them. In the suburbs, the Montgomery County system had excellent holdings, and seemed to do good business when I lived there. That was a while ago, though.

There are libraries and libraries. I think they are a wonderful institution and there is something romantic about the idea of them, and being in them; naturally that isn't always the reality.

Nosing into a book in a quiet corner of a grand city building is not quite the same as rifling through the daily papers in a brightly lit communal area of a dilapidated town centre building with the local bored/lonely/bookish. Each have their different pleasures and vibe.

Then there are the researchers, official or otherwise - e.g. see the teeming hordes in the British Library in London bagging their daily laptop spot.

As more and more gets digitised (which modern libraries are fundamentally core to and involved with) and the physical environments (formerly the intellect-grooming dens of the working-class) are seen as an irrelevance to be defunded - or merged with communal zumba classes and the like - with librarians replaced by floorwalkers and customer service we may see them decline, but it will be a sad day when there are none left.

Yes...now that I have kids, the libraries have great kids activities and I have gone back to the library more than when I had before kids. They also have educational adult activities as well like computer skills. They also have 3D printing, robotics, programming classes, etc so have kept up with the times.

To me it's like a community center with books, rather than a library.

Kids and bums.

I used to live in rural Georgia and there is a network of 300 libraries. It made the books I could borrow much larger because if my local libraries didnt have it, I can request one from hundreds of miles away. I thought that was the most awesome thing.

Now I live in Atlanta area (big city) and the two counties I have lived in do not participate in it. There is the same feature but I can only request books from within the county but that's like...what..2 dozen libraries?

https://georgialibraries.org/what-we-do/

There is slightly tongue-in-cheek blog "reviewing" removed titles from libraries at https://awfullibrarybooks.net/ -- the "Why We Weed" section has some additional links with more serious information on the topic.

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