Dr. Vinny wrote:
This weekend I got an email from a website visitor telling me about books in a dumpster at the NE library. I thought that's interesting, so I checked it out and ta-da! There were some perfectly good books in the dumpster at the Minneapolis Public Library Branch on Central Ave. I don't know about you, but that's pretty wasteful. Anyway, I just thought people might like to know. It's kind of sick them doing this, especially since there have been so many budget cuts and things of that nature.This is why they are called librarians and we are not. If we were to count every book bought by MPL over time, it becomes immediately obvious why books get thrown out. The public library and it's branches would take up all of downtown several stories deep if they did not. Remember that the library most often buys multiple copies of books. Books for the popular library are frequently bought at least 14 copies at once. They do try to sell them, with mixed results. They toss out of date dictionaries, atlases, auto parts guides, business materials, romances, who done it's, sci-fi and westerns ("the genres"). They toss out bad science or old science which has been superseded. Few books in the popular library holdings are kept if not borrowed for a year. At some point, a few will become classics (Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christy, Freud, Plato, et.al.) and pretty much stay put or be re-issued and re-acquired.
A rule of thumb I use is that if you can borrow it, it most likely won't be there forever. Hence Inter Library Loan.
When I've worked in libraries I've tried to beg off work on weed days. I've been known to dumpster dive for books after some libraries close.
WizardMarks, Central ________________________________
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