Comment by Guestmodinfo
6 days ago
Librarians do hide books. But not as a way of hiding from public but as a way of not throwing them away. Let me explain. Even though libraries are very big still they run out of space and regularly throw out (in India because most don't care) / ( or in Texas sell out books cheaply) and it pains the librarians deeply so they kind of stash books secretly from being thrown away. And if you really show interest in a particular book and request it nicely then the librarian will give it to you and tell you not to tell anyone. Why I know this because it happened to me in my college library in India. I can still after decades remember the love of books on that librarian's face
Almost every library regularly throws out books, and all librarians I know are happy with this. New books arrive regularly, and unless you plan on your library growing unlimited, you need to, in general, a 1 in 1 out policy.
They used to say that one of the chief roles of a librarian was to keep people away from books. There is a lot of truth in that.
Libraries remove unborrowed books and sell them. Borrowed books stay on the shelf. That's what they do with books.
No it’s a lot more complicated than that …
Librarians try to “market” books based on what they think the public wants or needs.
They try to assure a variety of books put forward, with a special emphasis on “good for you” books.
Books deed as “not good for you” are likely to be shelved in the back.
in practice, libraries use the Dewey decimal system, but that excluded the many “exhibits” of “good for you” material.
I don’t mean “good for you” in a good or bad way. It’s simply what the librarian believes will be most helpful to the readers.
There are currently some very real and important controversies in public libraries that have no clear solution.
> No it’s a lot more complicated than that
Article is about a librarian in Virginia. OP is commenting about practice in India. Unless there is some secret code to global librarian conduct, chances are you're all correct.
Judging books by their unborrowedness is like judging a youtube video's educational content by its view count. It's a bad reality created by the powers that be
Depending on goal of library and possible value of book this seems reasonable enough process. If you have library with goal of sharing popular enough content, keeping the popular books and removing truly unpopular that do not have significant value seems reasonable.
Unlike digital world where storage is cheap, in physical world it is limited. Thus focus on what the customers want is reasonable.
Archival libraries are different game. There keeping at least one copy is often reasonable.
> Judging books by their unborrowedness is like judging a youtube video's educational content by its view count.
I disagree with this. Libraries are notorious for being open about their processes; they will happily reveal flows of materials, down to the item.
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Why have shelves full of books that haven’t been borrowed in 15 years? what benefit is that providing?
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Uncirculated is just the first filter; most libraries don't cull solely on lack of circulation.
You've also got to look at what does it add to the collection, might it be used in the future, is it available elsewhere, etc.
But, at the end of the day, most libraries aren't archives. Having a collection of books that nobody uses doesn't provide a community service.