My school library is old and we are moving to a new building at the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year. The town first started talking about building a new school in 1968, but that's another story. With the move as an impetus, the librarian is weeding out the collection.
My students spend some of their vocational time stamping the word "DISCARD" in the front and back of each book to be eliminated. Presumably so that if someone finds the books at the dump they don't return them to the school. However, before they are sent to the dump they sit upon shelves so that people can take any that they are interested in.
Since I apparently don't have enough to read in the house or a long enough to-read list, I have been taking in many of these abandoned books. This was my source for my first William Sleator book (House of Stairs) and I just finished reading The House of Tomorrow, a diary kept by a 20-year old in a home for unwed mothers in 1959. (I was relieved the girls had their smoking room to both relax and keep their weight down.)
However, some of them should never have been ordered for a high school. Raising Spiritual Children? How many teenagers are going to be reading that? I wonder, too, about Your New Career: Life as a Nun, part of a career exploration series. Since it was purchased in 1965, it was taken out exactly zero times. As much as it pains me to throw away books, I have to admit that the ones that are going probably deserve to go.
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3 comments:
How do you decide what colour an entry is going to be?
They cleared the Octagon room from Queen Mary which contained lots of old books dating back to the 1700s or something. Just dumped these priceless books in a skip. No word to the students, they just did it. It is obscene... we are talking complete sets and first editions... a lot of money and history.
Needless to say word got around some people at the student bar and they went out to rescue the books but there turned out to be too many to carry away so only a fraction was saved.
Apparently the college did inquire of local booksellers whether they wanted a book donation but they all said no. No wonder- Queen Mary is in E1 and the pnly local booksellers are newsagents.
You know, it would have been much more simple for me to link to the Guardian article. Hopefully this works...
I look at all the pretty color choices and swoon a bit until one looks good to me. I was thinking of getting more balance with some non-pink.
Nothing in our collection is priceless, but it has crossed my mind that an ebay sale might raise some $ for the school.
Rian is glad to see Impetus making an appearance in Mater's every day life.
And if ye find the NUN book's twin - YOUR NEW LIFE IN A DRAFTY MONASTERY - please save it for Rian.
I shall not tell ye again how many books we striped and tossed at Ri - eh - the bookstore Rian worked for.
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