Quote Originally Posted by SWMAP View Post
Since most people aren't going to get their information from books any more, housing, cleaning, dehumidifying, de-bugging books - all costs of keeping paper books - won't be priorities for libraries.

I also have questions about the value of the collection. I recently saw a professional report on the value of a well-known Detroit collection about a famous person that will be nameless. Aside from a very few pieces of value to an ebay collector, most pieces, especially the books and ephemera, were considered to be in "poor condition" due to use, with dog-eared corners, brittle paper, torn bindings, etc.

The "valuable" collection turned out to be mostly sentimental and valueless, not worth the space being rented.

It is highly unlikely that books stored in a school and used by school-children are in good enough condition to even sell on Ebay for very much.

I love books, but I am pretty much tossing them now. Even cookbooks and food writing are more available, better catalogued and more enticing online. As for the rest – have you seen the sagging bookshelves at your local Salvation Army? I’m certain that what’s on those shelves gets tossed often.
I imagine that the HP protest is much more about the arrogance of an EM rather than about some tattered books.
Why throw them into a damn dumpster? I agree about the limited usefulness and actual value of the books, but there are recycling places that can @ least turn them into something more useful then a landfill. I swear, someones putting something in the water because Detroit and surrounding areas just keep muddling along, doing the same thing "we've always done this way".