Too many?

How big should your library be?

We’ve mentioned that one of our consultants has recently moved to a different apartment.  Even though that was months ago, he is still settling in.  The main reason is that he has a lot of books, and organizing them (even working out how to fit them in such a small place) takes time.

He has a lot of books, even by our standards.  We have to ask: are they all necessary?  How big does his library need to be?

We recall an article from (we think) the BBC a few years ago asserting that these days no one needs to own any books.  Any information you would want is available on the internet, and any book you want to read is available on a tablet like Kindle.  Well, maybe for some people that’s true.  Not for us.

We have a number of books that no one has yet put in electronic form.  Some deal with obscure or arcane subjects; some are fiction works that were never popular enough to be worth digitizing.  Some are mathematical or scientific books that may have been superseded, but have an approach that we find valuable.  We’ll retain at least some paper on our shelves.

Back to our consultant: he agrees that some of his library is unnecessary.  He has already disposed of manuals for obsolete software.  He has not been so quick to get rid of scientific works, like old conference proceedings, that detail the state of the art as it no longer is.  Partly there is a feeling that well-produced hardbacks are valuable objects; partly there is a feeling that they may have some historical value someday; but it’s hard to assert either idea with conviction.  He has less trouble parting with volumes he bought that were worth reading once, but not rereading; those will be sold or donated.

Related to the last are his inexpensive editions of classic works, like the paperback Heart of Darkness and The Three Musketeers.  He may indeed read them again, but is not inclined to move them to his next apartment.  They are easily replaced.

Our photographer justifies his retention of out-of-date travel guides as background information for his image archives.  We may yet convince him otherwise.  He is on much better ground concerning his books of photographs.  Much of their contents is indeed available on the internet.  However, even on an excellent monitor the quality of an image is limited, and unless the monitor is carefully calibrated the presentation will be wrong to some degree.  So, even though they take up a lot of space, we’re happy that they’ll be kept.

One type of book our librarian has is probably unique, or at least highly unusual.  There are several mathematical or scientific topics he has intended to learn, or learn much more of, over the years.  And even though he already has a book on the subject, sometimes he’ll encounter another one, possibly with a different treatment or way of explaining things; and he’ll buy it in case it’s useful.  But he now concedes that most of these will be redundant, and when he finally masters advanced thermodynamics (for example) they’ll be disposed of.

But even at his most ruthless, we estimate that our librarian will still retain nine books out of ten, and still have difficulty finding a place for them all.