On 01/14/2016 08:35 AM, Don Y wrote:
Our library disposes of a LOT of titles! And, it appears to be a somewhat
arbitrary choice. E.g., I'm friendly with the head librarian at one
of the branches. One day, while chatting with her as she "checked in"
titles, I saw her separating the books into two piles.

I volunteered at the library in Dover, NH and one of the tasks was
pruning the stock. There were two or three references books. One was
'Books in Print' and being included in BIP was good. I can't remember
the titles of the other two references but one was essentially 'Books
Every Library Should Have' and the other was similar. Being in those
guaranteed the book was retained. Miss all three and it was a goner.

I thought the BIP criterion was counter intuitive. The out of print
books are those that should be preserved. I scored a complete set of
John Burroughs, a late 19th century naturalist from NY. They hadn't been
checked out in some time and weren't in any of the references.


I questioned her as to why the distinction: "Oh, those haven't seen
much recent readership so they'll go in the discards pile..."

WTF? But, someone just read it! Else you wouldn't be checking it
back in! And, there's lots of empty space on the shelves (in this
branch).

The MPL doesn't have much shelf space. Part of the reason is devoting a
good deal of floor space to audiovisual materials. Again, that's what is
popular along with books with unicorns on the cover. Celine, Hamsun,
Hemingway, hit the road.


I'm not keen on yet another agency/entity tracking my "interests".
The local library opted NOT to comply with the request to track
borrowing patterns (though you know something can surreptitiously be
doing that). Recently, the outsourced their handling of the catalog,
reservations, etc. to a canadian firm. No mention of any privacy
guarantees.

The library supposedly only has records of holds and that you have a
particular book checked out. Bring it back and the record is gone. Or so
they say. I sometimes miss the cards in the pockets where they'd put
your name. Not secure at all but at least I could see at a glance if I'd
read a book. I tend to run through authors I enjoy and can't always
remember the titles I've read. Worse, sometimes I can get 50 pages into
the text before I get the deja vu feeling.