Recently, I started exploring a neighboring town’s public library.
Because of an inter-library system, I can check out books there.
To my amazement, the library has some extremely rare , old books on the shelf-books like Theodore Roosevelt’s account of his Amzon travales, books by Roald Amundsen, Fridjof Nansen, “Farthest North” by Luigi Amadeo , Duke of Savoy.
Now I’m reading a forgotten gem (“Cowboy and Indian Trader”)-by a man who started his career in the Old West -in 1887.
Many of these books haven’t been checked out in decades-why are they on the shelf?
And-how can I ask the library NOT to discard them? (I would gladly buy them up-it would be a sin to toss these very rare books out)!:smack:
Do they have a volunteer corps? If they do you might contact one of them, rather than, say, the head of the library. A volunteer really cares about what’s going on, an employee might think in terms of their job, and that an “old” book should make way for the new.
But I’d definitely offer to “take them off of their hands” if it looks like they are in peril of disposal.
I have once held a first edition copy of “How I found Livingston” and as this was in the library of the Royal Geographical Society in London I think it’s not a too far-fetched assumption that Stanley himself had handled that book.
Actually, I’d say the volunteers are the wrong way to go. There should be a director of the library system (not necessarily the head of your local branch) (or possibly a collection development/management librarian for the system) - those are your contact points. Volunteers have little say about the library generally other than possibly providing input, whether as a volunteer or a community member.
And these books may still be on the shelf because the library has decided not to get rid of them. Not knowing what library or library system, I can’t speak to their collection development policies.
How do you make sure they don’t weed stuff? Check it out! (Really, make sure it circulates, in a public library.)
How do you know they haven’t been checked out? Most libraries don’t stamp the due dates anymore.
I work in an academic library and am not really familiar with how things are done in public libraries, but we can’t sell our books to patrons even if we’re planning to toss them. Since the books were purchased with state money (it’s a public university), there are legal/ethical issues that prevent us from selling them. If you’re concerned about keeping these books on the library shelves, then do what **Zsofia **says:
A book is a lot less likely to be weeded if it’s been checked out recently.
Public libraries have book sales that include both donated books and books that have been culled from the shelves every single day. There might be different regulations in different states but I’ve bought ex-library books from all over the country. If you go to any standard used book site online you’ll see zillions of titles that are marked ex-library. Normally, these books are the cheapest ones you can buy. Having library markings, pockets, stamps, and all the other paraphernalia reduce the price by 90% or more. Except for a very few titles, collectors will not touch an ex-library copy. (Reading copies are a different thing.)
Many older books are not on shelves either. Larger libraries protect them by putting them into stack storage (or the equivalent) and only circulate them when they are specifically requested. Like by the inter-library loan that Ralph mentioned. So there is little chance that these titles will be tossed without serious reason. Libraries are under such cost pressures that old and rare books like these have been evaluated repeatedly over decades. If they’re still being kept it’s highly unlikely they would go before the whole system collapses.
I agree that knowing how long it’s been since they were last checked out is impossible. Certainly you can’t go by decades old stamps from obsolete systems. You can find check-out dates in some new online systems, but there will be huge gaps when those weren’t available.
The OP says twice that these books are on the shelves, although looking at the post again it’s not clear to me whether ralph124c has actually visited this library in person or if he found the books using the online catalog. If they’re in off-site storage, I’d also consider it unlikely that they’d be weeded any time soon – they’re probably the “survivors” of a weeding that occurred before things were moved to storage. If they are on the shelves then there’s a greater chance they could be weeded, although it depends on how well they’re circulating, how rare they actually are, and what that specific library’s policies are.
We were just forced to do a HUGE weed with no judgment allowed (although later I heard that some people did use their own, but I was told there would be a batch delete so it wouldn’t work anyway) - everything that hadn’t circulated in five years. I was kind of pleasantly surprised that on my sections they were almost all either more appropriate for an academic library, in poor condition, or probably crappy books (if your travel memoir hasn’t gone anywhere in a decade probably nobody is ever going to want to read it.)
Are you talking about the pre- or post- Unearthed Arcana 1st Edition?
I did check them out (I’m interested in the history of polar exploration). Many still had the old manual check-out strip inside the covers-Amundsen’s “Northwest Passage” had last been checked out in 1949! (Obviously, I cannot tell how often since the barcoded checkout system was implemented).
I suppose this isn’t too ethical, but couldn’t you just take the books and pay whatever fine it is for losing them? Assuming you want to own these, I mean
I know you’re not actually advocating that he do anything illegal – right?
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Of course not. Just that the possibility is there
Aside from being a horrible thing to do, stealing a book from the library and then paying the fine is not necessarily any cheaper than buying the book through legitimate channels. A “Very Good” first edition copy of Farthest North is currently available on Alibris for $75. At my library, a patron who stole this book from our collection would be fined $85 (replacement cost plus $10 processing fee), and it would go higher than that if the $75 copy on Alibris sold to someone else and the only comparable copies available were more expensive.
I love books, as a reader and as a historian. I also appreciate the tactile pleasure of hefting a book, and of lying back on the couch and reading one. But i don’t really agree that it’s a sin to discard old books.
First of all, just because a book is old doesn’t mean it’s rare. Plenty of these old works are available all over the place, in hundreds or thousands of libraries, and weighing down the shelves of used book stores.
Second, and more importantly in terms if the preservation of knowledge, is that many of these old books are now freely available through sites like Project Gutenberg and Google Books. Two of the books mentioned in the OP—Nansen’s Farthest North and Roosevelt’s Through the Brazilian Wilderness—can be downloaded free, in PDF, ePub, or plain text format, from Google Books.
Sure, if you have an antiquarian interest in the physical object then this probably isn’t much use to you, and if you’re someone who collects first editions just because that’s what you like to do, then an e-book will likely be a poor substitute. But libraries only have so much space, and as new books are purchased they have a reasonable need to replace older works, especially if those works are not popular with patrons.
As Exapno Mapcase points out, some libraries have stack storage available, where they can send these books, and from where they can retrieve them upon request. But many public libraries have no such facilities, and in these days of declining state and local support for public libraries, storage facilities for century-old books that are not especially rare is probably going to be low on the priorities list.