Most every librarian has had the dilemma of having to weed a collection. Some enjoy it, others react as though they were trying to saw off their own limbs for the dumpster. There are a number of reasons to weed books from a collection: physical state (as in, the thing is literally coming unglued), overstock (just *how* many copies of Good in Bed does one library need??), circulation (or lack thereof...there's no point to having a book that *no one* has read in *five* years), and plain old space (some libraries have this problem...not many, but some). The following was taken from today's Shelf Awareness. I just have to wonder if this will send librarians everywhere scrabbling into their stacks to check editions and calling auction houses...
"Twenty lots of J.K. Rowling's books were auctioned off by Christies International for a total of £36,560 (US$73,000), dramatically exceeding a low presale estimate of £20,000 pounds.
According to Bloomerg News, a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone that went for £4,000 "raised questions about Christie's controls after the London-based auction house confirmed that it didn't check whether the first edition . . . might have been stolen from the Northamptonshire Libraries & Information Service, whose label appears on the volume."
When Bloomberg asked the library to check the book's barcode number, it was confirmed that the library had "disposed of the book in 1999."
"Someone got lucky,'' said Grace Kempster, Northamptonshire's library-service manager."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment