A popular book that gets checked out often begins to fall apart in a year, so many of the books that arrive in the Catalog Department are replacement copies of books the library already owns. A book like, say, The Da Vinci Code, which is checked out dozens of times each month, is lucky to last a full year. Some books are replaced before they fall apart. For instance, baby-name books are traded out regularly. “Pregnant women don’t want to handle a grubby book, so we keep those nice and fresh,” Murphy said.
