Comment by k310
5 days ago
I visited the local library (California foothills) during a “book sale”, and what didn’t sell was left out in boxes, either for cheap or free. What didn’t move was destined for the landfill. I was aghast, but without enough room to take in the strays. Real estate is unforgiving.
I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed. They offer plans to build little libraries, and I hope to build some. “Owner” will have to build the supports, though.
Little free libraries are fantastic when possible. With that said, assuming the final disposition will be a landfill or pulping via recycling, as a last resort the Internet Archive will accept for scanning and long term cold storage books they have not yet archived. They have an app available to scan UPC codes or OCR ISBNs to dedupe.
https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a...
Books that have been scanned can be shipped using the below info.
https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...
(no affiliation)
My wife runs one locally. She's pretty happy with it, but I have to bite my tongue when talking about it with her.
People frequently take all the good books, all at once, and don't return them.
Someone just emptied out half of it yesterday, and I don't even think they were picky. They just took a whole shelf of books.
It's such a crappy thing to do, and there's nothing that can be done to stop the bad actors.
A lot of the bad actors are scanning prices on them and selling them. Deface the title page and inside covers and they will be fine to read but worth almost nothing at sale. A stamp saying "Taken from the Little Free Library of X. Share and enjoy. Please report sellers." would do the job.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Where I live actually has the opposite; there are ~6 within a mile, and they're usually completely full. People are always dumping huge collections into them, to where I never even have the chance to give back myself.
I don't know what makes it different here. But it is possible for them to work without safeguards.
Bad actors? Bad readers surely.
The trick is to plump up such a library with a few books no one will take. Cheap romances etc.
I hate to be cynical, but that's always been my first thought with those too, and that just sucks...
I really like devilbunny's idea of a cute little stamp though! It probably wouldn't stop very determined people, but would probably deter a lot.
We have a small local company that takes bulk book (and cds, dvds, video games, vinyl records) donations. That company has couple of retail used bookstores and also sells both retail and wholesale online but, according to their owner, most of what they get is sold for pulp.
My wife is an elementary school reading teacher and runs a yearly family book night where she takes book donations she gets all year and fills a bunch of portable tables in the gym with kids (and adult) books that are free for the taking. What is left over is taken (by me) to that local company and dumped in huge bins. If you are looking to get rid of a bunch of books I'd also suggest contacting your local schools to see if they take donations.
Libraries’ resources are not infinite, therefore most of them are explicitly optimized for circulation, not preservation. If they’re allocating valuable shelf space and staff time on something no one is using, they’re misallocating resources. You know what makes librarians’ hearts warm up? For people to use their spaces, collections, and services.
These free book shelves are no substitute for a real library, are they? In my experience, the offering is really limited. It's nice for a random find, but that's all. It's tough that books get burned, but if nobody wants to read them, there's no alternative.
Everyone had loads of books at home 50 years ago. Now far, far fewer homes have books.
They don't all have a home anymore.
Sad, but that's where we're at. It's not book burning in the traditional meaning, wven if that's what is happening.
> I am in favor of “little free libraries”
Do these work for kids' books? Whenever I've seen them geared towards adults, the content is absolute crap.
It takes the right sort of library owner to curate the library and a community amenable to helping out. My wife runs our library and one thing she does is pulls out some books when the library is flush and puts them back in when it’s a little dry. But she works in the book industry so she also has a source of high quality books and knowledge about them.
She’s specifically a children’s book person, so we made sure our library could fit kids books (picture books are big). But many of the kits won’t.
We also live in a walkable college town. There are 5 libraries within 4 blocks of ours. Our neighbors take it upon themselves to clean up and donate. We came back from our Christmas break to someone having installed a motion activated light in the library!
So under the right conditions they work. But you know what works better? Professional librarians, with appropriate resources and facilities. But in all cases, free libraries, public libraries, research libraries, etc. deaccessioning is required so sad for the op, we throw books away.
You get of what you put in. (Sort of)
I had a lot of good books that I finished reading and wouldn't realistically touch again.
Whenever I went to browse for some books I would leave one of them in exchange. Over time, the quality went up because other people started doing the same.
To be honest, I did curate the available books at it as well. Obvious crap (self-published conspiracy theory stuff) was thrown out. At some point you will also have to simple throw out some old ones if they never get taken. Space is limited and a 50 year old book that is collecting dust is not useful to anyone.
We have those around our town in a bunch of neighborhoods. Not sure on the usage rates, yet thought they were a pretty cool idea when I saw them, and they seem to always have books available (ie, not like they're just being taken and emptied)