A new connectivity

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Books are for use

Books are for use. That's one of the laws of Librarianship. It cuts two ways. As an advocate of libraries as centers of lifelong learning and repositories of knowledge I cringe when I see books being weeded. Weeding is a practice that the public is loath to hear about, because most people believe libraries to be places where books are kept. However, a recent Washington Post article brought the practice of somewhat ruthless weeding to the public eye. The library that was the subject of the article was weeding classics if they hadn't circulated in two years. Two years. That's a longer time than quite a few people want to give to a book to circulate. As the retail mindset infiltrates the library culture there are people who figure that books on our shelves ought to be checked out at least once a year if not more. I can actually understand that threshold for some books, such as recent best sellers or works with limited shelf lives, like the latest book on some aspect of computer technology. However, when I read that a library will ditch Silent Spring and Candide I cringe not just for the library of the future but for future of society. It is likely that access to these works will be maintained with electronic copies, and Candide is already online for free. But who will read it online? Who will happen across it online? On the other hand, who will find it at the library? They'd have to be browsing through the French Literature section. And the figures show that nobody's checking it out, at least not in the last two years. (Maybe 250 year old books just aren't as popular as 200 year old books.)

I like what the Arlington County Librarian had to say: if something of value isn't circulating, then we should make sure the public knows about it is there. Such thinking balances the extremes of the "retail model" and the "archival model." After all, another of the laws is that Libraries are growing organisms. I just want to be sure that all the growth isn't in just one direction.