# What % of library books are/have never been checked out? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2018, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723 "2018-07-11T16:24:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Textual\_Assault](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/34f0e0/32.png) [@Textual\_Assault](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Textual_Assault)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/41 "2018-07-13T15:35:52Z")
> [@wguy123](#): > > You must be younger if you never checked out or used any library books as references to get through college. I was an engineering student and even I had to have sources for papers. Of course, that was pre-internet days. Sadly, not that young. I never used any library books as reference material when in college, the only thing I did get was articles that the professors had on reserve that I and others copied and read. Granted some of those were from books and the prof was giving us a break from having to spend $10 or whatever on a book that we’d only read 15 or so pages of, so I suppose that could sort of maybe count. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/42 "2018-07-13T16:00:00Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > My brother! Manfred! Is that you? > [@minor7flat5](#): > > I always loved his F&SF science essays, and I have been amassing my personal collection of those nonfiction collections. I see seven of them on the shelf next to my computer, all scruffy old library books from various libraries across the country, complete with the little pocket inside for the card. > I just grabbed my copy of “Adding a Dimension” and see that it arrived at Niagara University Library in 1967 and was checked out 9 times between 1970 and 1984. > > I don’t see “Only a Trillion” in my collection so I need to find that one. I had to check. Turns out there were 22 F&SF essay collections. I have half. I’m a compulsive completist, so there’s an explanation. I had a subscription to F&SF by that time so I didn’t need the collections any more. He did 399 essays for F&SF and 373 of them are in the collections. The last 20 never got collected, and half a dozen early ones were skipped, probably because they had dated too badly. [Here’s a complete checklist](http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/f_and_sf_essays.html). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/43 "2018-07-13T17:21:17Z")
I think that, as of when I left grad school, a few paper copies of the thesis were officially required, but as I mentioned, none of the actual important people (the members of the committee and such) would actually read them. They also had this game where they kept changing stupid details like the required margin widths every couple of weeks, to force the student to keep revising it before they’d accept it. There was a move to change that (to allow the thesis to follow the standard format of any reputable journal in the field), but I don’t know if it went through. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/44 "2018-07-13T19:07:38Z")
Honors students were encouraged, although not required IIRC, to donate paper copies of our theses to the college library when we graduated in 1987. I presume it’s all electronic these days. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Manfred! Is that you?.. Uh… no? ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/45 "2018-07-13T19:18:46Z")
> [@Textual\_Assault](#): > > Sadly, not that young. I never used any library books as reference material when in college, the only thing I did get was articles that the professors had on reserve that I and others copied and read. Granted some of those were from books and the prof was giving us a break from having to spend $10 or whatever on a book that we’d only read 15 or so pages of, so I suppose that could sort of maybe count. Ah, I see you went to HandHold University. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/46 "2018-07-13T21:11:59Z")
I used to be a substitute teacher back in the 1980’s, and when the students were in Gym or Music or whatever, I’d read shelves for the school librarians. Once I found a book published around 1900 (first edition) which had never been checked out, going by the card in the back pocket. It was a biography of Marco Polo. My favorite “find” was that one library had two copies of the same biography of Mark Twain in its biography section. One was shelved under “Twain” and the other under “Clemens”, for Samuel Clemens. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2018, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/47 "2018-07-13T23:08:50Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Uh… no? Inside Marx Brothers joke. Manfred was the sixth brother, but he died as a baby. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/48 "2018-07-14T02:06:39Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > When my former university library decided to down-size by culling, rather than resorting to deeper storage, they employed a ‘dust test’ to see if older books were being taken off the shelves and looked at in-house, even though they wouldnt show up as being borrowed. And when I began my doctorate, it was precisely these once dusty, no longer existent books that i wanted. Do you mind if I ask what university you attended? The idea of using a “dust test” to weed books sounds completely nuts to me. > [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > My favorite “find” was that one library had two copies of the same biography of Mark Twain in its biography section. One was shelved under “Twain” and the other under “Clemens”, for Samuel Clemens. I got a chuckle out of this, because as a library cataloger I was occasionally obliged to clean up such anomalies. This one doesn’t surprise me at all. Until the 1980s, library cataloging standards required the use of _real, full names_. Oh, you call yourself “Mark Twain”? Well, screw that; here in the library, we’re gonna call you _Samuel Longhorne Clemens_, whether you like it or not! In the early 80s, the rules were revised and librarians could start using whatever authors actually called themselves. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/49 "2018-07-14T02:12:58Z")
How did the old rules catalogue authors known only by their nom de plume? (Imagine you didn’t know who “Mark Twain” was and had no way to find out.) How do the new rules deal with authors with multiple pseudonyms, or a combination of real and made-up names? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/50 "2018-07-14T02:14:28Z")
Man, I wish the misshelvings I have to deal with made that much sense. What I get is Nora Roberts in the kids’ section and a thesaurus in with the romance novels and thrillers in with the cookbooks and cookbooks squeezed in between science fiction and general fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/51 "2018-07-14T02:28:43Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > How did the old rules catalogue authors known only by their nom de plume? (Imagine you didn’t know who “Mark Twain” was and had no way to find out.) How do the new rules deal with authors with multiple pseudonyms, or a combination of real and made-up names? Librarians at the major reference libraries spent much of their time doing historical research to track down pseudonyms and the minutiae of bibliographic information to disseminate it within the profession. They worked with professors and book dealers and collectors who also sought to get complete information on every book and author. That’s part of what made librarianship a true profession. The classifiers and categorizers at the Library of Congress are the ones who mostly decide for ordinary libraries how things get filed. They get, by law, two copies of every book published. They decide where it goes on the shelves (both Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal classification) and how the author’s name reads and what the title of the book is. In the old days, they literally made up the master index cards and sent them to libraries to be filed in the card catalog. Today it’s all different, of course. They send out electronic files to be printed on the cards locally. Kidding. You still see mistakes, unfortunately. I can’t get my library to believe that The Weeknd isn’t spelled The Weekend. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/52 "2018-07-14T04:05:35Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Inside Marx Brothers joke. Manfred was the sixth brother, but he died as a baby. Ah - got it. Thanks. > [@erysichthon](#): > > …Well, screw that; here in the library, we’re gonna call you _Samuel Longhorne Clemens_, whether you like it or not!.. He probably wouldn’t like it, as his middle name was “Langhorne.” ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/53 "2018-07-14T04:05:42Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > How did the old rules catalogue authors known only by their nom de plume? (Imagine you didn’t know who “Mark Twain” was and had no way to find out.) It was done through traditional research—mostly searching reference books, although catalogers can use any other source (such as newspaper and magazine articles). I know of cases where the Library of Congress actually contacted authors by telephone to ask them about their names. > [@DPRK](#): > > How do the new rules deal with authors with multiple pseudonyms, or a combination of real and made-up names? Pseudonyms and variations are handled via cross-references. Here’s a good example: the [Library of Congress name authority record for Dean Koontz](https://lccn.loc.gov/n79081582), who has used eight pseudonyms in addition to his real name. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/54 "2018-07-14T04:07:24Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Ah - got it. Thanks. > He probably wouldn’t like it, as his middle name was “Langhorne.” Oops, my bad. :o ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/55 "2018-07-14T11:49:02Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > I would get that assignment, too, on a rotating basis. At Doe, it was called “fine ordering.” You were given only an hour at a time, because apparently it could make one’s mind go numb, though that never happened to me. Shelf Reading. At my friends library, that was a duty assigned to part-time casuals. Mothers with young children, to whom a 4 hour shifts spent away from the children was the high point of their week. So management consolidated it into a full-time job for one person. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/56 "2018-07-14T23:06:51Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In 1958 I took a course on English (that is British) novels. We got a large reading list and freely chose some number from that list to read and report on. One of the books, Trollope’s Warden IIRC, was over 50 years old and had uncut pages. I cut them. I was amazed. It might not have been the only copy the Penn library owned. I had to cut the pages of a book in the early 80s. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2018, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/57 "2018-07-14T23:11:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve heard of PhD candidates (who will be, as is the custom, donating a copy of their thesis to the university library) slipping a $20 bill into the pages of the thesis, and then every so often checking to see if anyone’s opened it and found the money. > > Of course, nowadays, the paper copy of a thesis is just a formality, since anyone who has any interest in it will be reading an electronic copy. Just slip a bitcoin in the electronic copy, then. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2018, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/58 "2018-07-15T00:45:27Z")
There used to be a library purge site ran by a couple of librarians that actually made it a business … they get hired to go through libraries and purge worn out or underused books (with some savagely funny reviews) books that they put on their sites but I have to see if I could find it again …… ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/59 "2018-07-16T13:51:54Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In 1958 I took a course on English (that is British) novels. We got a large reading list and freely chose some number from that list to read and report on. One of the books, Trollope’s Warden IIRC, was over 50 years old and had uncut pages. I cut them. I was amazed. It might not have been the only copy the Penn library owned. Wait . . . is cutting them like, actually cutting? That must be something else, right? I feel bad that I haven’t been to the library recently. I went all the time as a kid. That library was redone and expanded, and I just always assumed it was because of the time I lost a book and had to give them my allowance. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723/60 "2018-07-16T15:13:53Z")
When you’re binding a book (at least, using the old binding methods), you start with a very long piece of paper, which gets accordian-folded, and then is glued and has the cover attached on one side. Which leaves you with pairs of pages on the other side which are still attached together. Nowadays, those pairs of pages would be cut apart at the bindery (usually with a blade that cuts through the edge of the whole stack at once), but it used to be expected that the buyer of the book would do it. And if you bought a book but had no reason to read it at first, it might stay that way on your bookshelf until you do want to read it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-of-library-books-are-have-never-been-checked-out/817723.md?page=4)