Our Incredible Shrinking Library

It's quite a magic trick.  While entire shelves at our Main Branch have been disappearing, the shelves at the local branches bulge.  And then they shrink.

The trick is called "the floating collection."  Back when the magic used to be between the covers, at least one copy of most books were kept at the Main Branch.  Smaller branches had fewer books, but we knew we could find the ones we needed downtown.

But new management brought with it a plan to shrink the size of our collection.  This 2-part scheme began with the goal of getting rid of any book that hadn't circulated in one year.  My Antonia, The Great Santini, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  If they hadn't checked out in one year at your local branch, it had to be ditched.  Because the second part of the plan was that, regardless of where a book had been checked out, it was to be kept on the shelf of whatever branch it was returned.  Until there was no room, and then the shelves would be purged once more.

Take a walk along the stacks in any branch.  Where you see multiple copies of newer books that you may or may not have heard of, there used to be only one copy at each branch.  To make room for these multiple copies ---until they've reached their one year anniversary -- others have to go.

So if you're wondering why you have to wait four months for a Lee Child that is only a few years old, or why there are suddenly no copies of so many Discworld adventures, thank the vision of the director of the Charleston County Library.

He believes we are on our way to an exciting electronic world.  And he will force us to go to the electronic shelves to find books in print that we no longer have.  But it will be a long time before the electronic collection matches what we once had.  And I for one wonder if the rush to be rid of the printed collection has to do with forcing the use of electronic resources, merely to prove he was right.