I have 6 feet by 20 feet of text books (probably about 2-300), double stacked. 50+ years in the engineering profession. Primary subjects are: Structural Engineering, Civil Engineering, Hydraulics, Electronics, and heavy on Mathematics. My heart will not let me throw them away. Gladly give them for free to anybody that could use them.
What have you all done with your library after your career winds down? Admittedly, the books are old, and all the information therein could be found on the internet today.
Few years ago I took 7 boxes of computer books and gave them to my local used book store. Found out a few weeks later that all were thrown out (many were only 2-3 years old) because people buy novels only. Won't do that again!
There was an age when all these books were necessary. How could you get by without "King's Hydraulic Tables"? GE's electronic tube characteristics, transistor data books etc. Math books on Boolean Algebra, Mechanical Vibrations and so forth.
Yes, I have not looked at these books for five years except the math books. Don't really NEED any of them, but they were my life. When I pass they will simply be thrown away. Maybe I should do it now.
Any experience with this down-sizing would be appreciated.
A few years ago, I filled a dumpster with books, mostly data books. I don't miss any of them, except maybe the Gigabit Logic data book.
I have recently purged my home library, mainly to make room for more books. I only keep the great ones, the ones that are worth re-reading. I dump them in the recycling; there are few bookstores around, and the public library has a facility whose function is to get rid of books.
Do it now. Keep the really good stuff. Yes, it's sad.
Other than an estate sale, which some go to for tools, machinery and books. I'd say donate them to a library, at least a technical oriented library. (example; theres only one library around me that has the Sams photofacts) Maybe they would be interested. and then take the fair Dollar amount and take a deduction.
When I was much younger, I got my start in science and technology when a neighbor came over with a few surplus chemistry and physics books. He had operated an explosives factory during WWII and was in need of disposing the old books. As a teenager, anything on explosives looked interesting. I was hooked and squeezed as much as possible out of those books. I still have them today.
About 10 years ago, I got lucky. I found a college fraternity that maintained a fairly extensive library. I sent them a list of titles and IBSN numbers, and they took about half my pile. I drove all day in my pickup to deliver them. I'm not sure if fraternities are an option today.
I seem to be in the continous process of purging my bookshelves. The catalogs are useless and go to the recycler. I usually drag the tech books to the local used book store: I would guess I once had about 50Kg in tech books, for which I received $15. Oh well. What they do it take everything, pay only for what they think will sell, and recycle the rest as a service.
I did somewhat better with my comic book collection. I apparently had some rare old comic books and received $25 for what I was told they later sold for hundreds at a convention. I should have sold them on eBay.
I needed to clean out my office of books and manuals. I boxed them, and piled them in front of the door with a "FREE" sign: The pile shrank and grew as people took and added books. When the pile grew to roughly double the original size, I aborted the experiment.
I was driving around with some of the marginal books in the back of my Subaru. I happen to be at the local laundromat, which had a "Leave a book, take a book" kiosk in the parking lot. Seizing the opportunity, I carefully inserted my old books on everything from automotive mechanics to alternative energy in between the harlequin romance novels, and made my getaway. I expected them to be there forever. When I drove by the next day, about half the books were gone. After another two days, almost all of my books had disappeared, leaving only the harlequin romance novels. I have no explanation or clue what happened. One possibility is that they were taken to a nearby homeless camp. You might try establishing your own free book kiosk.
Like you, I'm keeping the old books. I have a fair collection of McGraw-Hill technical books from between WWI and WWII, where much of the basic RF technology originally was developed. I often go through these books to see how things were done with tubes or older devices. Little of the contents can be found online today.
I also have a problem with manuals on equipment I've designed in the past. I've chosen to scan those to PDF at my attorney's office with a high speed scanner: That's a double sided scan to PDF at about 2 seconds per side.
I'm now faced with yet another load of obsolete books. This is before I started emptying the shelves. There are 2 more bookshelves with a similar volume: They're now blocking a doorway awaiting replies to my offers of a donation. I didn't bother with the library because they really don't want them. Incidentally, I once delivered two large pickup truck loads of National Geographic Magazine to the local library, which didn't have the room to shelve them. So, they recycled everything. I'll probably leave boxes of the good books in various locations with a "free" sign. It's odd that I could be ticketed for littering or dumping free books.
Hopefully, I've given you some ideas and clues on what works and what doesn't. Good luck.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
One more idea. Become an online book seller: List your books with Alibris. You get to do your own shipping, which may be a chore. I've been unloading eJunk on eBay and this is much the same. I suggest you start with a few books that you know are going to sell, and see how things work. You won't sell the entire collection at once, and there will be items that don't move, but I suspect that the books will go to a better class of reader than the methods I previously suggested.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried selling through Alibris, although I've bought a fairly large number of used books from them.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Years ago i found out that libraries will refuse them - simply on the basis that they are OLD textbooks, never mind how well the subject matter is covered. Try PaperBackSwap; post them there and do some book trading. Another way is to find non-profits that support education in 3rd world countries where ANYTHING is appreciated.
Libraries will not take books; they will refuse books even if they would "fill in" their collection gaps. But if you have the time, go and find out for yourself - just do not waste time hauling the books with you for the query.
In several places where I have lived, there are charities that take old books and sell them. I have bought a lot of books from these. If I have duplicates or don't want a book then I donate it to one of these charities and they sell it. I have not ever seen them to throw out books, and at least if they do, they have given a lot of people a chance to buy the book first. Otherwise you could try to sell them on e-bay or similar, though listing them would be a lot of work.
If you still enjoy having the books now and trust your relatives to respect your wishes, then you could find a charity that would resell the books and state in your will that the books are to go to that charity if no relative wants them.
You could also contact archive.org - they are scanning a lot of books, and they also store paper books, inside boxes inside shipping containers inside warehouses. Their leader discusses it in this video:
I went into the science and engineering library at my local university the other day. There was not a book or a magazine in the place! All the stacks are gone! Some moved into another library, the rest in storage or discarded.
Sorry, but I didn't have time to produce a short winded inanity.
Nope. I just found out what happened. Across the parking lot is a Goodwill Industries donation trailer. One of the laundromat customers allegedly loaded most of my books into cardboard boxes, and dragged them over to the Goodwill trailer as a charitable donation. When I visited Goodwill in Scotts Valley on Saturday, I recognized some of the books. A few questions traced them back to the source. I suspect that the "laundromat customer" story might have been a cover up for the trailer attendant actually grabbing the books, but I have no proof, and really don't care.
In 1994, my house had a bad case leaking roof which produced some moldly books. I tossed most of the books ruined by mold and mildew long ago, but some residue may have remained. Smoking these books would be a really bad idea. Thank you for your concern for the health welfare of the local druggies.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
And a lot of us are in the same situation. Here are some semi-organized thoughts on how to deal with it.
1) Libraries. They're part of government. They have budgets. They think they know what their mission is. (Although a lot of us in the tech field can disagree on this). They see books as something that costs them money, shelf space, and labor.
Just dump stuff on them and they'll see it as a trash disposal problem. At best they'll pass them on to the local voluntary auxiliary organization that stores them up and sells them at their (semi?)annual book sale. What happens depends on the labor that they have available, and never expect the ladies in the Library Guild to have a clue about what you're giving them.
The one chance for your books to have a useful afterlife is for you to find a champion. Some library situation, or one lone librarian that really wants them. In this case that means at colleges, universities, and large municipal library systems that have a technical or engineering library or section. In order to do that, you need find their contact information, and send them an inquiry letter, and an inventory of what you have. Being an alumni might get a bit more notice.
2) Book stores: Used book store owners are a wonderful thing. That's another way of saying that only group I've found that's collectively more unhinged is surplus electronics dealers. A huge percentage of bookstores come and go. Some know what they're doing, some are off on some other planet. And now that we're all interconnected...
There are used technical book stores. (Here in the Pacific Northwest, I've sold stuff to Ada's Books in Seattle, and there's Powell's Technical Books in Portland, Oregon). But it's the same as libraries, they'll want to deal with an inventory first, or you can poke book info onto their web site and find out what they're worth.
There may still be some "book dumps", big stores with massive collections that would take most anything. But that makes them vulnerable to what's happening in the local real estate market. They've all disappeared from the Seattle area, for example.
3) Thrift stores: Not as bad a way as you might think. You won't get any money but there's a chance the books make find some later use.
Thrift stores get massive quantities of book donations. Some of the good looking stuff gets put on on display to sell locally. But there's stuff that doesn't sell or maybe they just received too much at once. These books gets sold off by the pound to wholesale processors where they get checked out on a computer workstation and graded into: good stuff that gets sold back into the used book market, donated to a cause that can use them, or pulped. Well, 75 percent ends up as Chinese toilet paper, but it's likely that anything valuable gets sieved out first.
This would be more likely at one of the larger organizations in big metro areas. A small town thrift store run by a local church probably just sends them to the county dump. Ask. It's likely that many used book stores use this same route out the back door, too.
This is where those $0.10 books from affiliates on Amazon come from.
4) Sell them yourself: The Internet is a wonderful thing. And there are ham radio swap meets, too. Yuck. I'd rather have a bonfire than have my much bedraggled view of human nature further tattered.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)
Dust moldy/mildewy books with talcum powder;try to get some powder between most pages or (most especially) where it is worst. Leave book that way for 3- daze and it should be good to go.
That helps dry them, but not kill the mold spores. On the advice of a professional conservator, I first vacuumed the books, page by page, with a HEPA filter and vacuum cleaner. I wore a Tyvek suit and elaborate respirator. I bought a small freeze-dry machine and froze the books for about 8 days each. The freeze-dry trick removed all the moisture. When I was sure they were dry, by weighing the books, I sacrificed an old microwave oven and nuked any remaining spores. There were some remaining stains, but I only cleaned the really old or important books.
I don't want to detail all the things I had to do to clean the house and replace the roof. I had an easy way to tell if was working. My nose was running and I was sneezing every time I entered the room. After a few months of cleaning, a partial carpet replacement, and a new roof, the sneezing stopped and has mostly stayed that way.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Scan them, post to one of those eternal Internet archives or your own free web site, and recycle the hard copies. Well, maybe not the steam tables and log tables.
I should do that with a few classics that I have here, that don't seem to be online.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
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