“Books Do Furnish a Civilization”

[ndrosen]

Joseph Epstein has an article in the December issue of Commentary: “Books Do Furnish a Civilization,” about libraries, personal, public, and institutional. I benefited by reading some of my parents’ many books, and I remember that when they were planning to move from their own house to an apartment in a retirement community, and needed to downsize their book collection, my father asked me whether I wanted any of their books; I declined. If I had been there, I might have gone through the shelves and chosen some, but I didn’t know which books they were planning to give or sell as opposed to taking with them, and didn’t have a list of my own of things that I wanted.

In hindsight, it would have been nice to acquire a few books for myself: some history books, like Peter Green’s Alexander to Actium, which I don’t recall seeing afterward in my parents’ apartment, or a book or two by Bernard Lewis. When my mother died, my sister and brother gave most of the remaining library (I picked out a few for myself) to a university in Fujian, China.

I wonder what will happen to my own more modest book collection when I die. Will someone want my sf, or my Georgist tomes, or some other stuff? Will there be much reading of anything that isn’t on Kindles or the Internet?

Comments

[selenite0]

My purchase of paper books has gone to almost zero. When I do get one, it's usually as a present. I still have several thousand paper books in the library, but the wife and I have occasionally discussed reducing it a bit. Ebooks are much easier on the wrists and take up less room. There's a bunch I'll hold on to because they have sentimental value or aren't in electronic form yet, but that's less than half the total.

My children don't raid the library much. They'll have interest in specific ones, but I don't see them reading books. Most of their reading is on their phones. I don't know how much of the library will be kept after us.

[thewayne]

As I am working at a library right now, it is a problem. Academics, where I am, are not as hard put upon for taking donations than public libraries. A lot of people think publics 'have to' take any old donations that people throw at them, and most of those end up in a dumpster late at night. They already have enough copies of The Twilight Saga, thank you very much, etc. Or the books are in horrible shape.

My local public library has one branch and no external warehouse. Book in, book out. They have to be very careful about acquisitions and weeding.

My library also has one site and no external warehouse. We have a bit of space and are on a buying spree right now as we have a grant that is in 'use it or lose it' mode: it's going to expire at the end of the fiscal year next June, so we're expanding our collection a bit.

Will we take donations? Yes. To a point. For the most part, our collection is related to studies and programs either at our college or at other schools in our network. We probably wouldn't take medical textbooks because we aren't involved in that.

Sadly, it's a tough thing disposing of book collections. My parent's books? Most of it will go in a dumpster. They've tried taking it to the local bookstore, they won't touch it.