I Hate to Pit a Library, But . . .

The BBQ Pit
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You all know how I love libraries, I’m even getting my master’s in Library Science. Well, today I walked all the way from Evetown to Nextdoorville, where the huge library, founded in the 1890s, has always kept as many of the original old books on the shelves as possible, including a complete collection of first-edition Christopher Morleys (one of my favorite writers). No more. Here’s the letter I just wrote to the library’s director:

I was just told by your reference librarian that your entire collection of Christopher Morley first editions (including 1910s-30s copies of Inward Ho!, Off the Deep End, Plum Pudding, The Romany Stain, The Powder of Sympathy, Mince Pie, Pipefuls) have been “weeded”—dumped on the dollar book table. The only near-complete Morley collection I have ever seen in any library, even New York.

I have checked all of these books out within the past few years, so that can’t be the reason they were dumped. The No. 800 shelves upstairs are half-empty, so it can’t be a space reason. What possible reason could there be to dump a shelf full of valuable (and brilliant!) old books? I actually use to brag to friends about the Nextdoorville library: “I walk all the way from Evetown, because this place still has incredible, impossible-to-find books on their shelves from 50, 100 years ago!” What am I supposed to say now? “Nextdoorville? Feh—nothing special. Might as well go to Evetown or Overthereburg, they all have the same stuff.”

Could you please check to see if these Morley books are indeed gone forever, no longer accessible to your patrons, and if so, how a disaster like this could have happened in a library that has always treasured its history?

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P.S. Yes, I changed “use” to “used” before I sent out the letter. *This is what happens when I get mad. *

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Can you buy them from the library? I mean, if they’re that old and valuable, and the library is stupid enough to offer them for $1 a piece, take advantage of them.

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Yeah, had I been lucky enough to be haunting the library every day. But Nextdoorville is a two-mile walk, and they’re closed weekends during the summer, so I can’t get there very often. Besides, why should I hoard all those great old books? I’d buy 'em, return them to the library and say, “get these the fuck back into circulation!”

I know all about weeding and shelf space and all that–I’m more sad than angry. This was a terrific library, like a time machine–you could find old copies of Elizabeth von Armin, Morley, S.J. Perelman, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Woollcott, essay and humor and travel books from the 1880s up to today. And the shelves were not crowded–this is a huge, ugly, modern building.

“Now–it’s garbage.”

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The libary defininitely weeded them, not just put them in the traditional stacks, far far away and guarded by a hugnry leopard? That is sad.

Eve As a library science person, have you encountered the heart-rending yet amusing tale of how Bodley’s Librarian ( I think named Thomas James) wanted to buy plays by one Mr. Shakespeare, but Bodley wasn’t too keen to sink to the level of buying such modern frippery. SO, when new edtions of whichever plays they were, came out, Bodley said, “look, if we are going to have this sort of thing, it might as well be in the latest edition,” and insisted on throwing out a First Folio or two. I was told that hundereds of years later, the Bodleian did buy back the same one or ones, but, well, at rather a large price. :slight_smile:

I believe it to be true, but I am not able to go a-hunting for a good cite, as the CelynComputer is in one of its very worst moods.

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I hope you get a satisfactory answer. Does the library have a new director or something who might have said “this is old, so it’s not useful anymore”? (of course, at that point in time, I’d call him/her an idiot).

Weeding is important, sure…and if you insist on weeding the stuff that’s valuable, you put it somewhere other than the $1 table.
I’d be pissed off too, and you’re right to write to the director. If that doesn’t work, you might see how the library’s governed - who the director reports to, and send a copy of the letter to them.

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aha! Look, I apologise if this is boring to everyone , but I got into one of those moods in which I just had to find evidence that my libray college tutor was not just making this up to amuse us on a wet day in west Wales. (Also, coming back to this thread, lets me sign up for e-mail notification, as I am keen to learn what response Eve[ receives rom this Library Vandal.) :slight_smile:

It’s an essay for the London Review of Books, also published, for some reason, in the “Guardian”.

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Eve,

Major hijack, but I wanted to ask if you’d assist me with something.

I work in a museum, and a photo of a woman was recently donated to us. The donor thought the subject was an actress, c. 1925.

I was wondering if I could contact you somehow, and possibly e-mail you the photo to see if you might be able to identify her?

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Sure–get my e-mail address from my web site and send it there–I won’t be back at the office till after Labor Day, though.

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I’d like to point out now that this mini-hijack is not an attack in any way, just a enquiry form a curious Brit (seeing as you mention Labour Day, I assume you’re a merkin). I’m also assuming you don’t have any impediments to your perambulatory functions.

Anyway, two miles would take about an hour to walk at average speeds, so why is it seen to be too far? Is it a merkin car-driven society thing?

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I’m not quite sure what your point is, Lord B.S.

I walk about two miles to Nextdoorville specifically to go to their once-wonderful library. I walk the two miles back, angry and mentally composing a nasty letter. A fruitless four-mile walk (despite being good exercise) is a bit of a hike in any country, I believe. Although the weather was lovely and I wouldn’t have minded the walk (over uneven, 100-year-old slate sidewalks, which must be negotiated carefully) had I returned with some good books.

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I’m not entirely sure what my point was either really. Being at work tends to severely diminish my mental capacity.
I think it seemed to me that a two-mile walk was considered ‘too far’, regardless of the destination. Just curious as to why. But you’ve negated that question. I suppose it’s because here in the UK we’re still very much a walking society, whereas (we tend to get the idea that) the US is pretty walker unfriendly to the exent of not even having pavements (or sidewalks for you I suppose) along some urban roads.

As an aside, the:

raised a smile. I can see that one being used in the pit. :smiley:

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See what I mean about the intellect-sapping qualities of the 9-5? You even end up forgetting where you are :smack:

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Eve Should you be really be walking considering that the pavement has sworn vengance on your family?

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Doing some quick poking around it doesn’t look like Christopher Morley first editions are all that valuable (mostly in the $30-$50) range, which means the ex libris they are probably near worthless – especially since the dust jackets were almost certainly missing.

So, if they were justified in weeding the books, the $1 book table is likely where they belonged.

Do they have other editions of these books? Because if so, from the library point of view there is no difference between an 80-year-old first edition and a 2-year-old reprint except in how well each will wear over time.

If the library does not have other copies of the books, then it is more questionable that they’d remove them. But if you were the only person to check them out in 10 years and they had any need of space (just because the 800s are half full doesn’t mean they don’t need more room in the 300s) then it might be justified.

I’m not one to fetishize books as physical objects (except for truly rare or exceptional volumes) and it doesn’t look like these particular volumes (to my quick look into the matter) have much artifactual value. Simply being old does not make a volume important (and in terms of when age does start to make something inherently important, the 1920s are young).

The primary goal of a library is to get information to those who want it, not to store artifacts of information’s conveyance.

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Well, now I know where your name came from. WTF?

Nope, the library now has no Christopher Morley books. I didn’t have the heart to check the shelves for the other novelists, essayists and humorists they used to have (a pretty complete collection of both Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough), which are probably gone now, too.

Are you saying individual libraries cannot have personalities? The one in Evetown is particularly strong on history, because the library director is a history buff. The Nextdoorville library used to be known for its large collection of 1890s-1930s books of essays, humor and travel (great old rambling guides to New York, New England, etc.).

To once again quote Oscar Madison: “Now, it’s garbage.”

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A slight aside - here they have just busted a family who were getting false library cards around the country and checking out old books with value, then selling them to dealers. It is probably in libraries best interest that they don’t have first editions etc.

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Well, the library apparently didn’t think those books were serving their users.

But, if there the library has no other way to provide those books (the contents, not those specific physical objects) and this is an area the library tries to focus on then I’d wonder what was going on. But I’m guessing the librarian that weeded them knows their needs and restrictions better than you.

You asked “What possible reason could there be to dump a shelf full of valuable (and brilliant!) old books?”

So that is WTF. I was saying that they were not valuable (as physical objects) and that for a library “old” is not particularly important (physically rare may be, but not old).

There are lots of reasons a library might get rid of a physically worthless old book despite the brilliance of its contents. Generally they boil down to either “we have higher priorities than the contents of this book” or “we have alternate methods of providing the information in this book and can better use the space.”

If you’re correct that these were books in use, in good repair, the library has plenty of space, and no alternatives, then perhaps there is some incompetence involved; but I would tend to give the collection librarian the benfit of the doubt on knowing what the library needs, what the restrictions are, and how to meet the intersection of the two.

Yes, of course libraries has personalities. But these personalities come from the fact that it is impossible for every library to have every resource. If it were, then all libraries would have everything. The personality of a library doesn’t so much come from what it has but what it can’t have and how it prioritizes.

I don’t know why your favorite books were removed from the collection. But every time something is removed someone is upset (I know this from experience) at the critical weakening of the institution’s value.

And finally, you probably don’t know where my username comes from. It was a word a group of us came up with in grad school. “obfusc” from the latin “obfuscare” - to darken, the Greek “iatros” meaning physician, and “ist” meaning one who performs. One who heals confusion. We liked that the word itself was confusing. And it referred to librarians.

I am the only one in that group that left librarianship as a profession, but I got to keep the name.

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Knowing our local library system, my educated guess is they got a new library director (the fact that her title is “acting director” is another clue) who wants a Fun, Fresh Look for her library, saw all these musty old books no one ever heard of (“Christopher who? Cornelia Otis what?”) and decided to toss all that dusty old stuff away to make more room for what people want, like Sylvia Browne, Chicken Soup for the Angel Lover’s Soul and whatever crap Stephen King’s student interns have churned out this week.

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Eve, I hope you report back here if you get a response. This kind of thing really infuriates me. I used to be a book fetishist; had hundreds of signed first, and many hundreds more hardcovers, and at least a thousand paperback books. When I had to move across country in a car that comes with its own carrying case and can park in an SUV’s glove compartment, I had to winnow my books down to one box.

And suddenly I was free. I became a library fetishist. I realized that each book I’d owned had become a reliquary: a souvenir of the time I’d spent reading it. And I wan’t to hold onto that reliquary to cherish forever. Well, when I started getting dozens of books at a time from they library, the books, as objects, held an equally personal emotional power for me, only it was a feeling of community, not of ownership. The ghosts of the other people who had shared the experience of reading this book kind of hovered over my shoulder as I read the book; I found myself constantly, if not fully consciously, aware of the community of people who read this very same book.

That’s the feeling I get reading old books, so I’d have been as big a fan of your former library. I hope this story has a surprise happy ending. Maybe they’ll track them down and you’ll begin a library collection of old theater and film books–open by appointment only of course, until the first big grant.