I see libraries throwing out large amounts of books, and then chasing non-book things that became laughably obsolete in a few years, such as:
- audio books on little devices to plug headphones into, which have cheap rechargeable batteries that seem to be mostly dead
- collections of children’s toys in a toy room that after a few years are missing most of their pieces
- large collections of DVDs
- computer labs full of computers that are old/slow and then need all kinds of restrictions due to a handful of antisocial people using them for inappropriate things, leaving them nearly unusable for anyone else
- fancy 3D printing labs containing hardware without enough volunteers to teach people how to use it, and with hardware going obsolete or unmaintained/broken
- a seed bank that had obviously not had any seed packets taken out in years
My local library is eliminating a section of books in order to build a “sensory room”. Nothing against sensory rooms, but I’m not sure it was a good trade for yet another skip full of books. (There is a YMCA next door that would be a more appropriate place for a sensory room - and indeed it has one.)
On a recent library trip, despite all that, the dehumidifier was not working and I saw signs of permanent humidity damage to books in the archive. This is the one thing libraries should be doing: preserving books.