How to Toss a Book

A friend of mine is touring England this summer, and posted the following picture on her Facebook account.

It's a quick peek at how books are treated in Cambridge. That's right, nicely bound classic books tossed willy-nilly in the garbage. It's a sad sight, but one that may be more common in the years ahead. Two recent trends are driving this transformation. The first is, naturally, the rise of eBooks. Who needs paper when you can make the same content available in a variety of electronic formats? It's cheaper to store and inventory, it's quicker to get the books out to more people, and you don't need those pesky library volunteers dusting shelves.

The second trend is in how libraries are transforming themselves in the twenty-first century. Libraries have always been more than just repositories for books. They store all types of content for patrons: newspapers and periodicals, audio and video recordings, and government publications, just to name a few. They have also act as research centers for the serious student, and a brick-and-mortar New York Times Bestseller lists for those looking for a great read.

But this traditional view of libraries is changing. Instead of focusing on making content available to the public, modern libraries are becoming places where the public is made available to the content. It's now all about the patron, not the books. The The Case for Books, laments the replacement of physical newspaper archives in libraries with microfilm images of those same publications, a practice that began decades ago. In Chapter 8 of the book, he quotes another expert who "rightly warns that the enthusiasm for digitizing could produce another purge of papers [from libraries]." Sounds like a prophecy to me.

So if you are looking for some books to read, to even up your kitchen table legs, or as decor for your walls, stop by the back door of your local library. Just be sure to bring a really big box.