(Please note we are throwing away old books that no one is checking out or books that are too damaged to circulate) Edit: fixed typo
Oh, OP, what’s the most amusing damage you’ve ever seen?
My absolute favorite damaged return was a book covered in weird hardened-goopy pink material, named something like “wax casting for beginners”. Probably one of the only times I laughed at a damaged book.
That would make me legitimately sad
I love libraries and the people that work at them ♥️📙
How long does a book have to go without being checked out to be purged?
Depends on the library and the type of book. Typical time frames are 10 years, 7 years, 5 years, or 2 years. For example I work in an busy urban library in the children’s room and we were running out of space in our fiction novel section so we did a 5 year then a 2 year when the first one didn’t make enough space. Our biography section grows less quickly so we do 7 year weeds.
The library i worked for for a while also had an archive system. If there were fewer than X books in the system for the whole country (not counting most novels) it would never get removed. It was wild spotting books that predated my grandparents just sitting on the public shelf, defended only by a “no checkout” sticker.
That’s got to be tough. Hope this means you can eventually order more that people have been requesting.
It does! We gotta clear space on the shelves sometimes for new books :)
God, libraries are cool
Doing difficult, noble work OP. Thank you for keeping local community resources running.
