>When I was teaching at SUNY Plattsburgh, the librarians announced that they
>would get rid of all the books that had not been checked out for a couple
>of years. You mean, we cried, if no one has checked out Plato or Dickens
>or....you fill in the blank, you'll chuck it?
>
>Well, they said, basically yes.
>
>I think they might have winnowed the rejects for the Greats, but otherwise...
>
>Nothing surprises me anymore.
>
>Joanna
>
The trash container behind the Strand on 12th st stocks many of the booktables south of Washington Square. A 'movement' office I once worked in contained about 15 cubic feet of books someone thought would be useful for a books though bars project. The sad fact though was that books through bars requests generally run the gamut from Iceberg Slim to Frantz Fanon, while the stockpile of books ran the gamut from water damaged Georgian architecture to long obsolete computer languages.
Upsala College a few blocks from me liquidated its entire library which included hard bound volumes of the Economist back to the very beginning. These turned up in an antique shop next door to my then place of work. They were sold to someone with deep pockets and shelves in need of decor. Had I the money to purchase them I would have had to toss my sofa and build a sofa out of them to get them into my apartment.
mcapri
>