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Posted on April 25, 2017 at 12:00 am by Gene Ambaum
↓ Transcript
Howard: No one is reading the books I donated to start the library.
Grant: Let me check the circulation stats.
Grant: The numbers don’t lie. You, sir, are correct.
Howard: I don’t need your machine’s opinion. I can see that they’re always on the shelf.
Grant: No reason to be mad at the computer, it agrees with you.
Howard: How can we get people to read those books?
Grant: Threats? Hypnosis? Disguise them as something they’d want to read?
Grant: Let me check the circulation stats.
Grant: The numbers don’t lie. You, sir, are correct.
Howard: I don’t need your machine’s opinion. I can see that they’re always on the shelf.
Grant: No reason to be mad at the computer, it agrees with you.
Howard: How can we get people to read those books?
Grant: Threats? Hypnosis? Disguise them as something they’d want to read?
Howard and Grant are a compatible pair because Howard is sort of digital. He can haunt ebook readers as a curmudgeonly ghost in the machine!
On one hand, I can understand limited space, so you have to weed once in a while. On the other, it is so difficult to throw old friends out into the cold where you know not what terrible events may occur. On the gripping hand, does not the “reference” part of a libraries function include archiving for future queries?
“On the gripping hand…” I like you already.
Start a fundraiser to get new copies of the best of them, and recycle the grotty originals?
But, what if they’re 19th century imprints or older and not widely held? If the library can afford conservation (or has a conservator), have some conservation done. And take them out of circ, and put them in Special Collections or a rare book room or find a library that wants them and will treat them with care. Even unpopular books may have some value for someone: a ghost or even a living patron perhaps.