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Commissioners block library's effort to discard books

A project to trim the number of books at the main library is based on an evaluation of each book’s condition, use and relevance and is not intended to clear shelves of classic works of literature and poetry as two speakers proclaimed Tuesday night at a meeting of the Henderson County Board of Commissioners, the county’s library director said Wednesday.


Two library users told commissioners that they feared the discard project would remove works of poetry and literature, nonfiction volumes and biographies.
Hundreds of books “with little or no public awareness have been removed from the shelves, likely on the way to the book sale,” Ken Fitch told the commissioners, referring to the annual fundraising sale by the Friends of the Library. “We just said the Pledge of Allegiance. One of the books is on the history of Pledge of Allegiance.”
“The library is undertaking the discard project by which they are eliminating books of poetry, fiction, drama, history and perhaps other areas,” another speaker said. “I am not aware that there have been any request for public input on the process.”

After hearing the objections, commissioners voted unanimously to block Rushing from continuing the project for a week. She’ll report to the commissioners on the paring down and the reasons for it next Wednesday. Commissioners also blocked the library from sending any discards to the Friends of the Library Sale, which started Tuesday.
Library Director Trina Rushing said in an interview that the library is undertaking the project for three reasons: to cull books no one checks out, to create more space for small meeting rooms and digital offerings and to ease the transition to a statewide network that will greatly increase the number of books, DVDs and CDs local users can borrow. Local and North Carolina books and authors will go back on the shelves even if they’re lightly read.
“What we’re doing is evaluating all of the titles in our collection, primarily in the nonfiction and biography,” Rushing said. “We’re doing this very systematically, taking the shelves row by row and scanning each one to determine whether it’s still being used or not and also looking at the condition and the accuracy of the material.”
The review was last done 10 years ago.
“If we don’t do this we’re going to need more square footage is what it comes right down to,” she said.
Before it joins a statewide network of book-sharing county libraries, Henderson County needs to dump books that no one reads or are no longer relevant, Rushing said.
“The library in January is going to migrate to a statewide card called NC Cardinal,” she said. “When we migrate, our patrons are going to have access to 22 library systems across the state. In our card catalog they will all show up. So they’re going to go from 317,000 items in our collection to 5.1 million items they will have free access to.” (Currently an interlibrary loan costs the reader $3.)
“Prior to migration the request is always made to evaluate and remove any titles that are unneeded because that’s less titles that they have to migrate accurately into the system,” she said.
A book that is owned by three other NC Cardinal libraries is discarded; if three or fewer libraries stock it the book is kept.
The main branch of Henderson County’s library system is running out of room for new books and other resources and has no space to add small meeting rooms, something patrons have requested.
“Our last two community surveys that we’ve done (have shown) that the community is shifting what they’re wanting from the library,” Rushing said. “They’re really needing more community meeting space, for tutoring, for the Literacy Council and for the elementary and middle school kids, and for small groups to get together to work on projects. The main library was used over 3,000 times last year; we’re turning people away.”
The library has five small meetings rooms plus the larger Morris Kaplan Auditorium. Often, the small rooms are all full.
Rushing said the survey also showed library users want more digital access.
“There’s more need for Wi-Fi,” she said. “We don’t have the seating area and we don’t have the outlets for people to plug in while they’re using our services, and then the classes and training sessions that go along with how to use the digital services that we provide.”
The evaluation of books is done by librarians with masters degrees in library science “and many of these also have their bachelors degree in the area they’re focused on,” Rushing said. A librarian with a masters degree in American literature is reviewing the literacy and poetry collection. “That gives us the knowledge and expertise we need to properly evaluate these titles,” she said.
Some readers have been startled by the image of entire shelves cleared of books. Librarians have cleared shelves by the cartload, she acknowledged. The library last did a “material evaluation project” 10 years ago. In the past, librarians have spent a year on the task.
“We’ve given ourselves three months to do it and it’s making more of an impact,” Rushing said. “Some (books) are going to be put right back out.”
While readers consider some of these books to be “important titles, they’re not being utilized by the community,” she said. Some bought in the 1980s have been checked out once. “We just don’t have the space to keep those on our shelves,” she said. “But the other libraries in our Cardinal system will have them and the one or two individuals who want them will still be able to get them.”
She picked up a book from the 1980s on cosmetic surgery.
“We can’t keep that on our shelf any longer,” she said. “The medical field has greatly advanced since the ’80s. Anybody who’s looking at our medical books for information on what happens during cosmetic surgery is not going to find it in a book published in the ’80s.”
She picked up a second candidate for the discard bin.
“We have a book, published in 2005 so it’s not that old, but it was policing the Internet and it has no mention of social media at all in it — inaccurate for a student trying to do a report. That’s what we’re looking at.”