Ah, the wonders of technology. At JustBooks, we constantly sift through our inventory to sniff out books that are unread / have not been borrowed to enable their weeding out ( leaving behind one copy, though) and replacement with newer books on shelves. This is an ongoing effort and the philosophy behind it is to give you, dear member, true value for your membership.
In a line of thinking at a complete tangent to ours, we read here that
Bangalore University (BU) is taking an initiative to attract readers to less read books that are old. The university library has more than 3.5 lakh books, of which there are at least one lakh books that are read by very few people. . One lakh books are now identified as less used, that means at least 30 per cent of the books – such books will be segregated and kept in a separate room!!!
Hmmm. On the face of it, such a move seems pointless & leading to redundancy but hey, who is to bell the cat?
Yes, I also feel that ‘less read’ books should not be ‘weeded out’. And honestly, it surprised me that you should say ‘weeded out’.
There are books that may be waiting to be discovered.
Maybe, in fact, like Bangalore University is doing, it is a good idea to bring such books out in the sun so people consider them.
Today, the most marketed books hog the limelight (and the readership). That does not mean that lesser known books are good-for-nothing and be removed from the library.
R,
Point taken.
BTW, the word ‘serendipity’ has such a nice connotation to it!
I don’t think constantly weeding out unread books is such a great idea, even while leaving a copy behind. The library just ends up being a stockpile of best-sellers (as it appears now – I am a member). That’s because very likely you’ll just not procure such books (by the same author, on the same topic, etc.) going forward in order to provide “true value for [our] membership”.
You need to give books some time on the shelves for folks to stumble onto them after they have exhausted their “must-read” lists. This serendipity is what is so valuable in a good library.