From the Indy today re. Manchester Central Library:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/manchester-central-library-fears-that-tens-of-thousands-of-books-may-have-been-pulped-during-170m-restoration-of-building-10045558.html 

It would appear that large numbers of non-fiction items have been disposed of. Councillor Rosa Battle, executive member for culture and leisure, said: “The only books which were withdrawn as part of this vital housekeeping exercise were those which were duplicated, outdated or otherwise obsolete".

It is precisely the 'outdated or otherwise obsolete' books that hold a special interest for groups like ours. Manchester of course was the home of many industries connected with mining and engineering and I would hope that we have nothing to worry about - or have we?

I've said it before - the barbarians are at the gates.

There should now follow a mass cull of council and library officials

Could Quinton Tarrantino be involved?

I can't believe a company called 'Revival Books' would pulp them, I would have thought they would end up in Hay-on-Wye.

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No surprise there, this has been happening for years.

Anyone fancy banging in a FOI request for a list of what's been destroyed?

Absolutely dreadful waste of PUBLIC PROPERTY!! I was thinking Thank God that they wouldn't have the same disregard for people, but then I remembered, Manchester is Labour controlled and look what happened at Mid-Staffs - literally makes your blood run cold!!

Cheers

Alan

Absolutely dreadful waste of PUBLIC PROPERTY!! I was thinking Thank God that they wouldn't have the same disregard for people, but then I remembered, Manchester is Labour controlled and look what happened at Mid-Staffs - literally makes your blood run cold!!

Cheers

Alan

Well,you wouldn't expect Labour to spend, spend, spend now would you, kick the Tories out, Job done.

As for the books, probably a load of old tat.

Lozz.

Well,you wouldn't expect Labour to spend, spend, spend now would you, kick the Tories out, Job done.

As for the books, probably a load of old tat.

Lozz.

I wonder if you think the same way for the people of Stafford?

Where's Stafford.

Lozz.

Where's Stafford.

Lozz.

East of Exeter

Wozzon.

Lozz.

"As for the books, probably a load of old tat.
"


I wonder if you will be saying that when The coal authority ceases to exist and we find out after a few years they have pulped the archive ?

Mention labour to some people , it touches a nerve 😉

Forty-odd years ago I had a summer job driving mobile libraries and vans for a Yorkshire library. One of the runs each week was to take dozens of boxes of 'surplus' stock for pulping so this sort of thing has been going on for a long time. I was told that the library got thousands of books donated every year and they just couldn't physically store them all so they had to keep culling them. As stated elsewhere, they were mostly duplicates or damaged and not worth restoring.

Most libraries weed their stock. Storage constraints make it inevitable. Universities weed material that no longer supports courses or contains incorrect / out-of-date information (e.g. in law or medicine). Public libraries weed material that is no longer in demand. Sometime sits a gradual ongoing process and other times (such as this instance) its a large scale exercise. Large scale weeds are often caused by major changes to storage capacity e.g. many major libraries have off-site warehouses racked to the rafters with little-used material; when budgets get reduced, the reducing the rent paid for off-site stores is often a means to save money.

Rarely is material indiscriminately pulped these days. It usually goes to book sorting warehouses that classify it by type and by value and who then sell it on to second hand booksellers by the shrink-wrapped pallet load, with only material of no value being pulped. A proportion of the old mining, engineering and technology books that we mine explorers buy from second hand booksellers comes from library weedings. So there is a sort of silver lining at times.

It would be surprising if the entire 240,000 volumes passed to a book recycling company had been indiscrimately pulped as the headline suggests. More likely any material with a resale value would have been resold. Old technical books on subjects such as mining and engineering have a decent value and are likely to have been resold. Keep an eye on the stock that second hand booksellers specialising in these fields are offering for sale - you may see some with 'withdrawn' stamped across 'Manchester Library' labels...

The library at Redruth often has sales of books withdrawn from their catalogues.
I've manage d to get a few gems over the years, one being 'My Caves' by Norbert Castaret; a snip at 50p :)
Another good place was the local recycling center at United Downs, prior to them having a big sort out and now everything gets trashed :curse:

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There are some secondhand book web sites which specialise in selling books on behalf of public libraries and giving the profits back to the library.

I have books from Manchester, Camborne, Imperial college, Southwark etc

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See alot of stock on ABE books website described as "ex-library"

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i hope the library did not think 19th century geological books " out of date" as these old books however old and inaccurate do give info on mines long gone and for that reason are a valuable resource to researchers, it took me years to get my hands on the 1931 book " the geology of Manchester and the south east lancs coalfield by hm stationary office" the thought of books like that being pulped makes me swoon, im still after a hard copy of Edward hulls book "the geology of oldham" circa 1864.
there is no way all 240 thou books they disposed of were all boring and no longer relevant someone out there would have wanted them.

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We will never know for sure.

I have just been trying to think of the most useless book I can imagine and the nearest I can get to complete uselessness is a 1960s road atlas

I am having a turf out at home here and have a load of books I am giving away or taking to a charity shop.

If my posting ends here peoples imaginations will start running wild.

Well no. I have a lovely AA hard cover 1996 road atlas on my lap I am unsure about. An "X Files Companion", don't laugh out loud, a book on self defense, romance novels of late wife's, you get the drift.
People aren't daft these days and everyone knows about eBay.

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