Comment by JumpCrisscross

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.