I Never Threw Away a Book–Until I Became a Librarian
By Kerri Sullivan
The first time I threw a book into a trash can, I cringed as I watched it fall. As a new librarian, there were few things I revered more than books. It felt like I was doing something fundamentally wrong. But then I caught a strong whiff of mildew and my doubts dissipated.
In the early days of my career, I worked at a suburban New Jersey library where I was assigned to sort through incoming donations for our book sale. We had many generous patrons who presented us with immaculate copies of new, popular titles that I was sometimes unsure they’d ever opened. But for every generous patron, there seemed to be three who saw the library as a dumping ground for the most disgusting books I’d ever seen.
I threw away hundreds of unusable copies every month. Those donations were sometimes brittle and yellowed, harbored insects both dead and alive, were caked in dust, or had rippled, water-logged pages that reeked of mold. The people who brought them to us acted like they were presenting us with precious objects. Certainly they didn’t belong in the trash.
It’s not that I didn’t understand the sentimentality. As a kid, nothing was more precious to me than a new book. Like nearly every little girl who grows up to be a librarian, I dreamed of someday having wall-to-ceiling bookshelves lining an entire room in my home, à-la Beauty and the Beast. But this sentimentalism also meant I owned a lot of books I didn’t even like but “couldn’t” get rid of. For most of my life, I’d believed that once you acquired a book it was something you owned forever.
I was not this way with anything else. I’m happy to donate clothing, household items, and childhood toys in the hopes that someone else will be able to use them. For a long time, I couldn’t shake the idea that books were different. They (individually) didn’t take up that much space. They were decorative and said something about how smart, well-read, interesting, or cultured I was. I couldn’t get rid of them, because there was something romantic about owning a lot of books. Because I was a bookish person. Because they were books.
But when I started working as a librarian, I suddenly wanted to pare down my personal collection. Public librarians are defenders of books but many of us are not as sentimental about them as you might assume. We know from experience that outdated, crumbling, or moldy books do not serve anyone, and when there are too many of these on a shelf, they distract browsers from the books that are actually useful.
For most of my life, I’d believed that once you acquired a book it was something you owned forever.
“Weeding,” the practice of carefully ridding a library of the titles that no longer serve its community, is an important part of librarianship. The donated books I’ve thrown away were wheeled to an inaccessible dumpster far from anywhere patrons parked, a practice designed specifically to prevent us from winding up on the local news. Every library I’ve worked for has only resorted to throwing away books when they were absolutely useless as far as their content or condition. Most offer weeded books up for sale, put them on a “free” cart, or ship them to a place like Better World Books for redistribution. Weeding is never about getting rid of things for the sake of it, It’s always about how to best serve the library’s community.
When the time finally came for me to take the lessons I’d learned about weeding home with me, I started by taking stock of the book on my shelves. I owned books from when I was a child and a teenager that I doubted I’d ever reread. I owned books that were given to me as gifts; books I’d long-ago promised myself I’d read “someday”; highly specific self-help books for problems I no longer had; books I’d only bought to impress men; old textbooks.
At first, I’d worried weeding my personal collection might make me feel sad, but I found the process energizing. I didn’t know it until they were gone, but some of my books were a crushing weight I was destined to forever move from place to place. Getting rid of them was a relief. I posted photos of stacks of books on Instagram and offered them up to local friends. I donated some to the library’s book sale. I gave a selection of writing-related books to the writing center where I took classes. I inserted interesting books into Free Little Library boxes. And for the few books I discovered on my shelves that were torn, colored-in, completely outdated? It may horrify some people, but I recycled them.
I am not suggesting anyone throw away perfectly good books, any books they love, or any books they want to keep. I am just saying that it has been worthwhile to periodically evaluate whether or not the books on my shelves served their purpose anymore.
There are still hundreds of books in my house. I kept the books that felt like portals to previous versions of myself, that brought me back to who I was when I read them in the elementary school media center, sitting in the bleachers at softball games, in dorm rooms, or on vacations. I kept every book I want to always have at arm’s reach; I kept books written by my friends; books I waited in line to have signed; cookbooks I actually use. (And, okay, maybe I kept a few books I desperately hope someone will notice and ask me about.)
Like everything else, it is possible for books to reach the end of their useful lives. Information becomes outdated, or the book was never meant to be evergreen to begin with. Paper deteriorates and silverfish feast on wood pulp and glue. One way to protect books from these fates is to get rid of them before they reach the point of no return. Getting rid of books, if you do it right, is like giving them a whole new life. Whenever I get rid of a book, it’s with the hope that someone else will experience it the way I did (or the way I couldn’t). It’s to make space in my home for a book I will want to hold onto. It’s to get a book into the right hands, because mine no longer are.
And if I ever get rid of a book I later want to read again? I have a pretty good idea of where I’ll be able to track down a copy.
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Kerri Sullivan is a writer, librarian, and the editor of New Jersey Fan Club: Artists & Writers Celebrate the Garden State. Her writing has appeared in Catapult, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, NJ Indy, and elsewhere. She currently lives in North Jersey. You can find her on Instagram @ksulphoto and at kerrisullivan.com.