Alameda Library throws out a hundred thousand books!?!?

[Kalmia]

Have we discussed this? I am sure some small number of books were torn or ruined, but please... How many librarians are unfamiliar with the concept of library book sales or donating to charity? Perhaps the library director and her staff should actually read some of the books in their care. Perhaps the should read some of those"outdated" volumes and gain some wisdom to go with their utilitarian ability to count the number of books that will fit on the shelves. Well, at least the public outcry has probably saved the books in the five dumpsters and has pushed the library to change their policy on discards.

 

http://abc7news.com/education/residents-upset-alameda-county-library-throws-out-thousands-of-books/531951/

[FaithManor]

I haven't had time to explore this, but is there any chance that it is a health issue? Our local library had to get rid of hundreds of books when a storage room flooded due to a burst pipe. They tried salvaging the books, but mold took hold. You don't want to give away or sell moldy books.

 

Just a thought.

[Tanaqui]

The only book they specifically mention is that biography of Willie Mays. We have nothing else to go on. Maybe these books were predominately books that really are unsuited for a book sale - chewed up, pages missing, smell like pee books. Even new books that are only a few years old can be like that - I once took out a book that had only been on the shelf a couple of months, found that on several pages another patron had, for some bizarre reason, rubbed holes right through the page, possibly with an eraser. Utterly unreadable, and the librarian tossed it after I showed it to her - but if somebody had just happened to see it in a dumpster they would have assumed it was a perfectly good book.

 

For a different perspective, try this. I'll just quote one of the comments later down:

 

I also don’t think most people realize how expensive and time-consuming it is to process a large number of library books for resale. If you don’t remove or deface almost every identifying mark linking a book to your library, helpful folks will find it and return it to you. My boss has a book in her office that was weeded, sold at the booksale, and then found in Hawaii eight years later. It ended up in our ILL office with a concerned note and moderate water damage from its slow-freight return trip. A good box cutter would have saved everyone no end of trouble and postage.

 

Of course, it's also possible that some nitwit decided to simply cull everything over a certain age. We just don't have enough information. I'd want to see more than one example (preferably an actual title) before I decide that the librarians just hate books.

 

There's another view here, and again, the comments are illuminating.

 

Of course, that site is where I first learned about Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, which probably influenced my opinion on this matter.

[OneStepAtATime]

Maybe it was a health issue or some other valid reason (I hope there was a valid reason like that) but maybe not.  Local public schools here threw out hundreds of old books because they weren't allowed to order new ones until they had significantly reduced the number of books on the shelves.  For some dumb reason they weren't allowed to give them away or sell them.  My SIL (a teacher) was sick but the school threatened sanctions if they caught the teachers sneaking out books.  A janitor that knows my SIL secretly salvaged a lot of Little House on the Prairie books for her because he knows how much she loves those books and uses them frequently with her Autistic kids.  It was absolutely disgusting.  They tossed out old school supplies, too, instead of giving them away.

[FaithManor]

Maybe it was a health issue or some other valid reason (I hope there was a valid reason like that) but maybe not.  Local public schools here threw out hundreds of old books because they weren't allowed to order new ones until they had significantly reduced the number of books on the shelves.  For some dumb reason they weren't allowed to give them away or sell them.  My SIL (a teacher) was sick but the school threatened sanctions if they caught the teachers sneaking out books.  A janitor that knows my SIL secretly salvaged a lot of Little House on the Prairie books for her because he knows how much she loves those books and uses them frequently with her Autistic kids.  It was absolutely disgusting.  They tossed out old school supplies, too, instead of giving them away.

OH, I agree on that point. Sometimes it is mind boggling the waste. I dear friend ended up with practice clocks, counting bears, and a huge number of other really nice K-2 math and reading manipulatives that were nearly brand new and in some cases brand new because her dad is the custodian of an elementary school. Two buildings were being combined due to declining enrollment, and the staff didn't want to bother having a sale. They just filled the dumpster with the contents of multiple storage rooms. INSANE! He took out thousands of dollars of items, gave some to his homeschooled grandchildren, and then sold the rest on craigslist and ebay.

 

For the love of staying late on a Friday or showing up on Saturday, tossing up a few tables, making some price labels, and cheap advertising, the school district could have had some money in its pockets for needed items, allowed the community have it since they paid for it through their tax dollars in the first place, and NOT attempted to stick it in a landfill. So dumb. Really. Donate it to a 501C and let them ship it to needy kids. Anything. That was just really lazy on their part.

 

But, I do know that that severe damage is the number one reason our local library tosses books and magazines.

[Lanny]

I wonder if there is some reason, legal or other, why they could not have given or sold them (by the pound) to a company like Thrift Books?

In December 2012, on Amazon, we purchased a textbook described on Amazon as "Used-Very Good" from Sierra Nevada Books, a Thrift Books company. When DD inspected it, she said "it smells like a new book". It had the stamp, on the inside of the front cover, of a small school district North of San Francisco but apparently had never been issued to a student. Sometimes on Amazon, the Marketplace Seller states that it may be an ex library book.  This seems like they don't care about the landfill space the books will take up, or that someone might have read some of them...

 

We have a carton in Colombian Customs this morning. It has 2 textbooks for DD and 2 books that were formerly Best Sellers for me. The books for me were described in "Used-Like New" condition and were 28 cents and 41 cents plus shipping.  Probably the Amazon Marketplace Sellers bought them by the pound?

[Word Nerd]

It's possible that they threw the books away because they're lazy or hate books, but more likely it's because no one wants them and it was cost-prohibitive to ship them somewhere else. One commenter who claims to work for the library says they already do recycle books and have book sales. I don't think we can know how much effort they put into getting rid of the books without tossing them in the garbage. 

 

I think many objections to book disposal are based more on emotions than logic or practicality. If the library offered all the dumped books free to the outraged public, I wonder how many thousands of books would still be remaining after everyone picked through them. I might get a book thrown at my head for saying so, but a book isn't valuable just because it's a book.

[rocassie]

I know our library system has a used book store, has a bi-annual sale for all the books from the book store that haven't sold in six months, then moves those books that don't sell during the sale to a few bookshelves in the library marked free.  If the books are on the free shelves longer than three months, then they get tossed.  I think recycled but I"m not 100% positive.

 

I hate for a library to go straight to tossing out books, especially when people/schools in the area could use them.

 

[Ipsey]

The only book they specifically mention is that biography of Willie Mays. We have nothing else to go on. Maybe these books were predominately books that really are unsuited for a book sale - chewed up, pages missing, smell like pee books. Even new books that are only a few years old can be like that - I once took out a book that had only been on the shelf a couple of months, found that on several pages another patron had, for some bizarre reason, rubbed holes right through the page, possibly with an eraser. Utterly unreadable, and the librarian tossed it after I showed it to her - but if somebody had just happened to see it in a dumpster they would have assumed it was a perfectly good book.

 

For a different perspective, try this. I'll just quote one of the comments later down:

 

 

Of course, it's also possible that some nitwit decided to simply cull everything over a certain age. We just don't have enough information. I'd want to see more than one example (preferably an actual title) before I decide that the librarians just hate books.

 

There's another view here, and again, the comments are illuminating.

 

Of course, that site is where I first learned about Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, which probably influenced my opinion on this matter.

 

This is NOT OK, Tanaqui.  That "Awful Library Books" site has ruined me for the rest of the day.

Also, this.

 

  Dramatic reading of Latawnya the Naughty Horse.

 

WHYYY?

 

(Sorry for the tangent)

[Arcadia]

For the love of staying late on a Friday or showing up on Saturday, tossing up a few tables, making some price labels, and cheap advertising, the school district could have had some money in its pockets for needed items, allowed the community have it since they paid for it through their tax dollars in the first place, and NOT attempted to stick it in a landfill.

Alameda county library system stretch from Albany, Berkeley in the North to Fremont, Niles in the south. Whatever the library earns from book sales will never go to school districts which are either funded by the state or by local property tax. Whatever is earned through book sales may not even cover utility costs for a few days. People don't pay much at the book sales and even the free books aren't taken sometimes. My family do have Alameda County library cards as anyone can use their library.

 

What would be nice would be if the library system had open a day for the county's school teachers to get those books for their classroom libraries. My nearby public school classrooms libraries were well stocked because parents donated plenty of new books from scholastic book sales.

 

ETA:

I don't know what they throw but some new books in the libraries already have plenty of food stains.

[Lanny]

I just read the article the OP linked to.  Two of the 4 books that are in the carton we are waiting for were purchased from Goodwill's that are Amazon Marketplace Sellers. One of them is SF Goodwill.   The other is Goodwill in Houston.  Even if a Goodwill store or some other large volume seller sold some of them for one cent + $3.99 shipping, on Amazon, they would make a profit of 30 or 40 cents on each book they sold. Possibly a Goodwill store in the SF Bay area would have sent a truck and a crew to pick them up, if the library had been willing to donate them?

[Lady Florida.]

 

 

I think many objections to book disposal are based more on emotions than logic or practicality. If the library offered all the dumped books free to the outraged public, I wonder how many thousands of books would still be remaining after everyone picked through them. I might get a book thrown at my head for saying so, but a book isn't valuable just because it's a book.

 

I agree. I'm an avid reader and book lover, but I don't get the belief that no book ever made should ever be thrown away. Books, like any mass produced product*, do have a finite life. Sometimes it's time to just recognize when books are no longer in readable condition, and get rid of them. Also as others have mentioned, it would very likely be cost prohibitive to try and have a sale.

 

*No matter how much we as educators and book lovers like to think of books as being lovingly stitched together, they are mass produced products. Most books manufactured today are glued or stapled together.

 

 Even if a Goodwill store or some other large volume seller sold some of them for one cent + $3.99 shipping, on Amazon, they would make a profit of 30 or 40 cents on each book they sold. Possibly a Goodwill store in the SF Bay area would have sent a truck and a crew to pick them up, if the library had been willing to donate them?

 

I believe there are serious flaws in your economics.  What if only one in a hundred books sold in the first year -- keep in mind, these books are the remnants that have been picked over several times, these aren't in demand.  How much does it cost to hire the truck and the crew to pick them up?  How much does it cost to keep the books in a warehouse for a year?  What cut does Amazon take?  How much does it cost to catalog the books?  Finally, for one in a hundred (thousand?) books, you get an order via email.  How much does it cost to hire a person to find the book in the warehouse, package it up, and send it out?

[happi duck]

They need to get some volunteers to start a "friends of the library" chapter.

 

In our "friends" group, our main goal is to find homes for discarded books...selling, consignment and donating.

 

It's a lot of work.

[Arcadia]

They need to get some volunteers to start a "friends of the library" chapter.

They do have friends of the library at the respective branches. They have 10 branches and a bookmobile.

 

"The Library continuously freshens and updates its collections with popular and appealing new materials. To make room, we must also continuously de-select materials that have become worn, dirty, damaged, outdated and are no longer of interest to the general public. We offer these de-selected books to our Friends of the Library groups to resell to benefit the Library. We also offer them to non-profit organizations. "

http://www.aclibrary.org

 

Example of friends of the library for Fremont which belong to the Alameda county library system

"Fremont Friends of the Library raise additional funds at Book Sales held twice a year. The Fremont Friends of the Library, a non-profit volunteer organization, was established in 1965. All proceeds from the book sales are given to the Fremont libraries to purchase equipment, books, children's programs, etc. Books available at the sales are donated from the libraries and private individuals. "

http://guides.aclibrary.org/content_mobile.php?pid=121671&sid=1729864#box_1729864

[Word Nerd]

They need to get some volunteers to start a "friends of the library" chapter.

 

 

They already have them.

 

http://www.eventkeeper.com/code/events.cfm?curOrg=ACL&curKey2=book%20sales

 

http://guides.aclibrary.org/content.php?pid=124482&sid=1147020

[Carol in Cal.]

This is asinine.  This is not a small rural community with tons of shipping costs and a one room library.  This is a crowded, urban area full of people who love books, with many used book stores to serve them (us).  No way could they have had trouble disposing of these.  All they had to do was call the used book stores and ask them to come by and pick them up.  If they had just tipped them off as to where the dumpsters were, it would have been sufficient.  The whole justification for this is lame beyond belief.

[happi duck]

Wow, I assumed they did not have a friends group based on throwing so much away.

 

I wonder why the friends didn't get involved?

[Carol in Cal.]

In the Bay Area library jobs are civil service positions and often in the bigger systems are not filled by people who love books.  It's as simple as that, and as remarkable.  I live in San Jose, and I can't remember ever getting meaningful, enthusiastic book recommendations from a librarian, let alone a library assistant, in our huge library system.  In neighboring Santa Clara it is quite a different story--great employees who love books.  I don't know about the Alameda County systems, but I imagine that they are spotty as well.  Someone who doesn't love books would just follow orders.  It's really a shame.

[JustEm]

I believe there are serious flaws in your economics. What if only one in a hundred books sold in the first year -- keep in mind, these books are the remnants that have been picked over several times, these aren't in demand. How much does it cost to hire the truck and the crew to pick them up? How much does it cost to keep the books in a warehouse for a year? What cut does Amazon take? How much does it cost to catalog the books? Finally, for one in a hundred (thousand?) books, you get an order via email. How much does it cost to hire a person to find the book in the warehouse, package it up, and send it out?

What Lanny suggested is exactly what big book sellers on amazon do and they make good money doing it. Of those thousands of books some will be worth something more than a penny but they make a lot on penny books plus shipping. Amazon takes less because of the huge amounts they list and sell daily. They already have a warehouse to hold the books so that isn't an added cost at the time of picking up those books.

[Sherry in OH]

I agree. I'm an avid reader and book lover, but I don't get the belief that no book ever made should ever be thrown away. Books, like any mass produced product*, do have a finite life. Sometimes it's time to just recognize when books are no longer in readable condition, and get rid of them. Also as others have mentioned, it would very likely be cost prohibitive to try and have a sale.

 

*No matter how much we as educators and book lovers like to think of books as being lovingly stitched together, they are mass produced products. Most books manufactured today are glued or stapled together.

 

 

I agree.

 

I wonder how many of the discarded books were brittle books.  The invention of wood pulp paper led to inexpensive books.  It also led to collections full of books crumbling into dust.  A few publishers continue to print on wood pulp paper, but between 1830 and 1980 the practice was widespread.

[swimmermom3]

OH, I agree on that point. Sometimes it is mind boggling the waste. I dear friend ended up with practice clocks, counting bears, and a huge number of other really nice K-2 math and reading manipulatives that were nearly brand new and in some cases brand new because her dad is the custodian of an elementary school. Two buildings were being combined due to declining enrollment, and the staff didn't want to bother having a sale. They just filled the dumpster with the contents of multiple storage rooms. INSANE! He took out thousands of dollars of items, gave some to his homeschooled grandchildren, and then sold the rest on craigslist and ebay.

 

For the love of staying late on a Friday or showing up on Saturday, tossing up a few tables, making some price labels, and cheap advertising, the school district could have had some money in its pockets for needed items, allowed the community have it since they paid for it through their tax dollars in the first place, and NOT attempted to stick it in a landfill. So dumb. Really. Donate it to a 501C and let them ship it to needy kids. Anything. That was just really lazy on their part.

 

But, I do know that that severe damage is the number one reason our local library tosses books and magazines.

 

Faith, I am wondering if the school book disposal is something like what happened with the Detroit Book Depository. There was a fire, but there were still tons of text books and school supplies that were brand new and in perfect condition.  They were left to rot because insurance had been paid and there are laws against reselling goods that have been covered by insurance - or something like that. I wonder if there are regulations about selling or distributing things paid for with tax payer dollars.

 

On the other hand, a post you made a couple of years ago on  corruption in the Detroit public school system caused me to lose a week to blogs dedicated to urban decay in Detroit.  There were many abandoned schools that staff just walked away from and no one ever made arrangements for the supplies, books, computers, or school records. There was so much cool history that I was unaware of regarding Detroit and sadly so much waste. The scale of everything was mind-blowing.

 

But I really digress.

 

[KungFuPanda]

My theory is bedbugs.

[FaithManor]

Lisa, don't start me on Detroit! The problems there stagger the imagination. :banghead:  :banghead:  :banghead:

[Critterfixer]

 

My theory is bedbugs. 

 

 

I was going to go there, but the thought made my skin start crawling. :scared:

[FaithManor]

Detroit and bedbugs in the same thread! :svengo:  :svengo:  :svengo:

[Word Nerd]

This is asinine.  This is not a small rural community with tons of shipping costs and a one room library.  This is a crowded, urban area full of people who love books, with many used book stores to serve them (us).  No way could they have had trouble disposing of these.  All they had to do was call the used book stores and ask them to come by and pick them up.  If they had just tipped them off as to where the dumpsters were, it would have been sufficient.  The whole justification for this is lame beyond belief.

 

Do you know for a fact that they didn't try to find somewhere else to take them? If a book is torn up and stained, who would want it? You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about their motives and their love for books.

[Arcadia]

My theory is bedbugs.

I had cockroach larvae in my old books. Silverfish at my bookshelves.

 

"There are several types of insects that damage collection materials including books. The most common pests are roaches, silverfish, and various types of beetles. These insects eat the protein and starch components in books and other materials, and the feces of these and other types of insects can disfigure collection materials."

 

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/conservation/resources/insects/

 

ETA:

We did cockroach dissection for biology when I grew up in Asia since its so easy for anyone to catch a few to bring to class.

[EmseB]

I think there are probably tons of factors at play.

 

I love books as much as the next person, but I'm also getting more ruthless about culling things.  If there is a Friends program in various cities and there were still hundreds of thousands of books left then I would imagine the books left are stuff no one has wanted for years. 

 

Or the budgeting mechanism for buying new collections is seriously flawed and there's no way to store/sell/get rid of enough books in a timely fashion at the rate the libraries are required to purchase new stuff.

 

 

[Laura in CA]

I haven't read all the replies yet, but wanted to respond -- I work at our local library (in the East Bay) and the employees are passionate about books. :-) (However, some books do get damaged beyond repair.)

 

 

What would be nice would be if the library system had open a day for the county's school teachers to get those books for their classroom libraries. My nearby public school classrooms libraries were well stocked because parents donated plenty of new books from scholastic book sales.

 

Every two weeks, we put out several carts full of "retired" and donated books, and local schoolteachers can come take as many as they like. It's on their own time, after school, so it takes a dedicated teacher to do this -- but several do come each time. We recently had a very pregnant teacher come take several large boxes full of books for her schoolkids. She said they would be ecstatic to have just ONE book to take home, no matter what it's about and what condition it's in. Although our town is fairly well-off, esp. for a high-COL area (this would fit with that middle-class thread), with median household income over $100k, there are also many, many immigrant families (from Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, etc.) with household incomes well under the poverty line.

 

We (local homeschoolers and others) recently held a book drive to donate books to schoolchildren in Stockton -- a huge, struggling city an hour or two to the east of us in the Great Central Valley. After a teacher from our district moved there to teach, we learned about conditions in the classrooms there -- some of the classrooms have only one book, and the children have no books at home. Again, it took dedicated volunteers to collect the books (many donated by those of us who have houses overflowing with books) and drive them over to Stockton. These things don't just happen, but a few people passionate about bringing books to underprivileged children and adults can make a difference.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Sometimes it's actually quite difficult to get rid of books.  I can't even give mine away half the time and so yes I admit I throw some out.  I hate hate hate doing that.  Sometimes I even mail people books for free (I even pay the shipping) just to pass along a nice book.  But ya know I can't afford to do that with everything.

 

Our library has a used book store.  They are very particular about what they take.  Some of the books from the library don't make the cut. 

 

 

[redsquirrel]

This can be such a complicated issue.  DH is a librarian at a major research library. That is the actual designation of the library, not just something I call it.  It is HUGE. It covers acres. They toss almost nothing and are spending hundreds of thousands to keep the books in storage in highly controlled conditions. It takes so much money to store books...you don't even want to know about the fire protocol. It involves special crates that put the books under pressure and freeze dries them etc. My point about this is that keeping books that don't circulate is a huge commitment and takes major financial resources. Most public and even college libraries don't have those kind of resouces.

 

And all libraries, especially public ones, are under constant pressure to open up shelf space for new books. So a book that was only 4 years old was being tossed? Well, what if that book sat on the shelf for three years and 50 weeks? I don't think it has earned it's spot on the shelf. It is a biography of Willie Mays, an important person, yes. But these days someone is going to go to wikipedia first and maybe, later on, look at a library book. All libraries go through and check to see what is moving and what is not. It is just a fact of life.  If it doesn't move, it goes and something else takes its place.

 

As for giving it to local schools, again, that can also be difficult. Through the librarian grapevine we are hearing of entire school districts firing ALL of their school librarians. Who takes care of the books, who manages the library if there is no librarian? Who is supposed to come an pick up the books and then catalog them. tattletape them, and shelf them? Our local public library offers discarded books to teachers first and hardly any ever show up to take them. The teachers just don't have the time and they don't have the space in their classrooms.  And as for selling them or donating books, again, that is a staffing issue. Who is going to take that on? I know my local public library has very few full time employees and moving that much material is big job. So, what part of their job do they not do while they also deal with distributing boxes of books that may or not may not be wanted elsewhere.

 

I am not saying tossing that many books was the right thing to do. But, all libraries do toss some books. My guess is that any book that hadn't circulated in some number of years was pulled. If they tossed them it might be because someone was stupid, or because there was a miscommunication, but it might just as well be because they simply did not have the staff hours to do much else.

 

They do need a friends of the library, maybe. But that is also a huge big job. My local FOL hosts a huge book sale twice a year. It is in the top 5 of used book sales in the country. I go on the first day and fight the good fight against the dastardly book dealers (this is a booksale joke, ok?) It has nothing to do with the library staff and is it's own self sustaining thing. But it also requires a warehouse for storage and hundreds of volunteers. it is not an easy undertaking.

[SparklyUnicorn]

To add my kids sometimes do the summer tennis program around here.  It's in large part an outreach program, but the program is open to anyone and I just have my kids go because I see it as a free gym class (and it's not competitive).   So they give the kids free books, free food, free bags, free everything.  They have given my kids some free books in the past.  These were donated books.  Now I hate to sound ungrateful, but the books they gave us were pretty lousy.  One was musty.  There was no choice so the level was not appropriate.  I could not even give those books away so they too ended up in the trash.  I know people mean well and I know we are definitely unusual in that we own tons of books, but it's like giving someone a free shirt that doesn't fit, is falling apart, or would be embarrassing to wear.  Again, I know, I'm just spoiled, but even people with low or no incomes don't necessarily want or need crap. 

 

Sorry if that comes off as obnoxious. 

[lovinmyboys]

As others have said, selling/donating books takes time and if you have to pay people to do it, you likely won't get your money back. The libraries where I have worked have handled withdrawing books differently. One does sell books on Amazon and recycles the rest. Another one has a friends of the library book sale and recycles the rest. I don't know that any of the three library systems I worked for just threw them in the trash. As we would weed the collection, we would separate into the recycle and sale piles.

 

Some books people really don't want and if it is a big enough library system, it could be a lot of books people don't want. I wonder how many times that Willie Mays book was checked out in the last year. If it wasn't checked out at all, then I am guessing no one would want it. Even if it was donated to them.

[Lanny]

I believe there are serious flaws in your economics.  What if only one in a hundred books sold in the first year -- keep in mind, these books are the remnants that have been picked over several times, these aren't in demand.  How much does it cost to hire the truck and the crew to pick them up?  How much does it cost to keep the books in a warehouse for a year?  What cut does Amazon take?  How much does it cost to catalog the books?  Finally, for one in a hundred (thousand?) books, you get an order via email.  How much does it cost to hire a person to find the book in the warehouse, package it up, and send it out?

 

 

You are correct in that probably only a small percentage of them would sell. Assuming they were priced at one cent + 3.99 Shipping, the Amazon Marketplace Seller would make a net profit of 30 or 40 cents on that $4.00 transaction, after paying Amazon and their packaging costs and shipping costs and their other costs for having them in a warehouse and listed on Amazon, etc.

 

Probably companies like Thrift Books buy books in huge quantities, and pay by the pound for them. Probably not a lot of money per pound...

Probably companies like Thrift Books buy books in huge quantities, and pay by the pound for them. Probably not a lot of money per pound...

 

Instead of speculating, I actually looked, and this company doesn't pay anything to acquire books.  They get libraries to ship them unwanted books (at the library's expense), and if they sell the books, the library gets a small cut.  If they don't sell the books, they toss them.

[KungFuPanda]

Do you know for a fact that they didn't try to find somewhere else to take them? If a book is torn up and stained, who would want it? You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about their motives and their love for books.

Librarians are EVIL! Haven't you seen Parks and Rec???

[Lanny]

Instead of speculating, I actually looked, and this company doesn't pay anything to acquire books.  They get libraries to ship them unwanted books (at the library's expense), and if they sell the books, the library gets a small cut.  If they don't sell the books, they toss them.

 

I am  surprised they have that information publicly available. I would have thought that would be proprietary information. In that case, it would have cost the Alameda Library a lot of $, to ship them to Thrift Books or some other large book seller. However, I wonder if a local company such as Goodwill in San Francisco, would have been willing to send a truck, locally, to pick them up, if the library donated them to Goodwill. 

 

2 of the 4 books that we are waiting for were purchased from Goodwill stores on Amazon. I assume they were donated to those Goodwill operations (San Francisco and Houston). We paid $3.95 + shipping for one book (San Francisco Goodwill) and 28 cents plus shipping for the other book (Houston Goodwill) so they will make a little on the first book and a tiny bit on the 2nd book.  A little bit of income for those Goodwill operations...

 

As has been mentioned in this thread, probably many of them were in very bad condition and/or nobody had checked them out in years. 

[Sherry in OH]

The books you bought from Goodwill were not necessary donated by the library.  They could have been donated by an individual who bought them at a Friends of the Library Sale.  It can be surprisingly difficult for libraries to find places to take their discards. 

 

Look at the options:

The library can offer the book to other libraries or collections in the same system.  Odds are they tried.

 

The library can offer the books to the Friends of the Library or similar organization for a book sale.  In larger systems the Friends are picky about what they will take.  They don’t want materials they don’t think they can sell because if it doesn’t sell, they then have to dispose of the items.

 

The library can offer the items to other libraries and collections. Libraries do exchange needs and offers lists.  Rare materials may be sold.  General collection materials are more often donated. But, participation in these exchanges requires the library to have space to store the materials and staff to compile and search lists, pull out the requested items, and box and ship the items.  The library may or may not be reimbursed for shipment of donated materials.  They are unlikely to be reimbursed for staff time.  The staff will still have to find another way to dispose of the remaining items.

 

The library can send the books to a reseller.  Resellers have criteria for what they will take.  The library pays the shipping.  The materials may or may not sell.

 

The library could donate the items to international organizations. These organizations send the materials to libraries in countries with few resources.  Donated materials must meet their criteria. The library often pays the shipping charges.  Cash strapped public libraries can’t afford this option. 

 

The library could donate the items to local organizations. Again, condition and subject specific. Some organizations don’t want library discards.  The inability to handle large-scale donations and poor resale value are just two reasons.

 

The library could give the items to via “free book carts,†as prizes for library-sponsored events, or through known need/desire.  Some libraries have policies forbidding this practice.  Public library patrons would have to appeal to the Board of Trustees for a change of policy.  

  

They could sell or give the items to scrap collectors as waste paper.  If there are any in the area willing to take the items, libraries try to do this.  Often though, library materials do not meet the scrap collector’s criteria.

 

Anything left gets tossed. Quite frequently the anything left is the bulk of what was removed from the collection.  In cases of mold, insect infestation, or damage due to bodily fluids (you really don’t want to know), this may be the only feasible option.

[Tsuga]

Having been the recipient of collections of books like this, I have to say sometimes just save a tree and recycle. You know how many 10-year-old English Language Learners in the third world REALLY NEED your book on Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel 2007? I mean really?

 

People are so convinced that their trash must be worth something somewhere.

 

Ask yourself, would you buy it for more than the list price, the cost to list (including labor) and shipping? No?

 

Why do you think someone else wants that?

 

I love books and I say, recycle! Make room for new, less moldy, more technologically relevant books.

[ElizabethB]

I got some of my favorite books from library book sales. Very sad.

 

I love library book sales. The best ones have a last day or last few hours where you fill a whole bag for set price, I usually end up with quite an eclectic selection from the fill a big days.

[plansrme]

I am dubious about any library's claim these days that they are culling books to make room for new books.  If our library is any indication, they're disposing of books to make room for vast swaths of empty shelf space.  

[Tanaqui]

This is a crowded, urban area full of people who love books, with many used book stores to serve them (us).

 

I live in a crowded, urban area full of people who love books, with many used book stores.

 

The used book store closest to me has a sign on the door stating that they do not ever take unsolicited donations. They have too many books as it is, and not enough shelf space.

 

The Strand ("Miles and Miles of Books") does buy books... but they don't purchase every book. They only accept those books in good condition that have "resale value". You have to bring your books to them to assess before they'll do purchasing.

 

Housing Works does not accept "Books with markings, heavy wear, water damage, missing pages or covers, mildew, or strong odors ... or any dated material such as travel guides that are more than a year old".

 

Westsider Books tells people explicitly to "Weed out any books that might be falling apart or written in and place them in your recycling bin."

 

And so it goes. Not one of these places accepts every book brought in, because plenty of books are worthless. They cannot be sold. They just collect dust and take up space. All these places are already loaded down with books. The Strand, in particular, is a veritable maze of shelves (and no, that's not an exaggeration. It took me a week to locate ARCs, because they're in this little nook that's formed by shelf-walls.)

 

All we know about these books are the rather hysterical comments about the travesty of ever tossing out a book and one single reference to a biography that's only five years old. Well, this is a library - books that circulate probably are falling apart after five years. Books that don't circulate well? If people won't take them home for free, do you really think they're willing to pay a dime or a quarter or a buck apiece for them?

 

You ever work at Goodwill, or any other not-for-profit thrift store? People will bring in literal garbage - bags of stained panties, boxes of broken toys, books so mildewed they're stuck together - and insist that the stores take them. Their things are precious, and beggars can't be choosers, they claim. Really, they're like hoarders, except they don't want to do the hoarding themselves.

 

I can't guarantee that that's what happened here, but I give it at least even odds that these books aren't anything special or valuable and that the people kicking up a fuss don't want them either. They just want the library to hold on to them forever.

[Arcadia]

Goodwill and Half Price bookstore probably won't want the books too.

 

I am dubious about any library's claim these days that they are culling books to make room for new books.

Alameda county library system does have plenty of books. They have a generous amount of multilingual books and DVDs. The SF Bay Area libraries are very well stocked while the real estate the libraries sit on are pricy.

 

Even the SAT prep books are the latest editions most of the time. The world book encyclopedia is the latest edition too.

 

This is not my county but my kids go to classes in that area so we use the library system.

[Tsuga]

 

 

Really, they're like hoarders, except they don't want to do the hoarding themselves.

 

You've really hit the nail on the head there.

[Laura in CA]

Having been the recipient of collections of books like this, I have to say sometimes just save a tree and recycle. You know how many 10-year-old English Language Learners in the third world REALLY NEED your book on Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel 2007? I mean really?

 

People are so convinced that their trash must be worth something somewhere.

 

Ask yourself, would you buy it for more than the list price, the cost to list (including labor) and shipping? No?

 

Why do you think someone else wants that?

 

I love books and I say, recycle! Make room for new, less moldy, more technologically relevant books.

 

 

Just for laughs -- I am trying to upload a picture I took of some of our rejected donations. If I can't, I'll list some of the titles.

 

Rats, I can't. OK, imagine garish 70s-style (because they are from the 1970s) covers.

 

Fodor's Soviet Union 1979

 

Fodor's Europe 1979

 

Publish Your Own Photo Book (c. 1973)

 

Getting Results with Microsoft Office 97  (so you see, that Microsoft Excel 2007 is modern!!!)

 

Sylvia Porter's New Money Book for the 80's

 

Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?

 

The Coming Real Estate Crash

 

and my personal favorite (imagine a garish 70s cover):

 

Early Detection: Breast Cancer Is Curable --by Philip Strax, M.D., with a foreword by Marvella Bayh (Mrs. Birch Bayh)

 

 

Also, I'm not even sure that 100,000 books is a lot. Especially if that includes, for instance, mass-market paperbacks, tiny phonics books, etc.  Today I must have put several hundred donated books into the recycling dumpster. Books from the 1970s that were musty, falling apart, moldy, etc. When I got to work there were 12 boxes of books waiting to be gone through ... and someone else had already processed donations twice earlier today.

[redsquirrel]

I am dubious about any library's claim these days that they are culling books to make room for new books.  If our library is any indication, they're disposing of books to make room for vast swaths of empty shelf space.  

 

That is often to meet demand for ebooks. And remember the library doesn't own an ebook or a kindle book. They have to lease them, and they may only rent it so many times in the course of the year, etc, etc. And if they don't renew the leasing agreement then 'poof' the book disappears from the data base. Book publishers loooooove kindles and e-readers. And libraries are all about customer service and maintaining a current stock, or are supposed to be anyway. So, if people want ebooks then that is what the library will stock. And it is often not possible with funding for a library to own both the electronic and hard copy of a book, but it is starting to happen more often. And, I don't know about you, but I hear so, so many people say they only read on their kindle these days. Libraries absolutely hear that as well, and the shelves are just going to get emptier in response. The library won't go away, but it will have fewer physical books.

 

Many libraries, including my own local one and the one dh works for are clearing off their shelves of old classic books and offering those sorts of books as e-resource only with no due date, essentially giving them away. If you can get it for free off of amazon then you might also find your public library has stopped carrying it, or only has one or two copies. If those don't circulate, then it might go altogether.

 

That has been the promise of electronic resources for libraries and the idea of things like google books and Gutenberg. Make those things available to everyone for free on the web and open up shelf space in libraries.

 

Libraries are becoming places people go to use computers or have book club meetings or get training. They are fighting to stay relevant.

[Tsuga]

 

 

Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?

 

Okay but I actually do need that book for my kitsch collection.

 

Also, thanks for the laughs. I have sorted books before. So many laughs, so many lost passions, so many ridiculous books. Makes you think, "But I can't publish my novel... and this guy somehow gets into print. Why."

 

 

 

The Coming Real Estate Crash

 

Obviously not enough people checked that one out.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Having been the recipient of collections of books like this, I have to say sometimes just save a tree and recycle. You know how many 10-year-old English Language Learners in the third world REALLY NEED your book on Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel 2007? I mean really?

 

People are so convinced that their trash must be worth something somewhere.

 

Ask yourself, would you buy it for more than the list price, the cost to list (including labor) and shipping? No?

 

Why do you think someone else wants that?

 

I love books and I say, recycle! Make room for new, less moldy, more technologically relevant books.

 

So true.

 

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

 

 

Obviously not enough people checked that one out.

 

haha..yeah

 

I remember driving home from work late at night listening to some financial show about the real estate craziness.  This was pre kids and pre married (but engaged).  I thought...that's not going to end well, I guess I won't be buying a house anytime soon.