Sunday, January 22, 2006

ex library books

Every now and then libraries have sales and sell off old books. How do the libraries decide which books to sell? Is it because nobody has borrowed them for the last five years? Or has somebody read them and decided they are no longer worthy of library status? Or do they just get rid of the older books to make way for the new ones?

And to make things worse, the poor books are scarred by bar codes and stickers and dewey decimal numbers - or worse, the part of the cover that had the bar code has been cut out, leaving an unsightly gap. This makes them somewhat of a second-class item at secondhand stores, so these poor books may never be read or loved again. They might be a bargain at the library booksale for a dollar or two, but they have very little resale value.

No comments: