Barbarians halfway through the gates

[Guest]

"Manchester Central Library is in the midst of a £170m, three-year restoration of its elegant domed and porticoed building, built in the Great Depression as a symbol of hope. A vast circular inscription from Proverbs exhorts citizens to "exalt wisdom and she shall promote thee".

Campaigners describe the pulping of at least 210,000 non-fiction books as "cultural vandalism on an industrial scale". They point out that the book collections are as important as the fabric of the building. The letter describes the collection stored in the stacks under the library as an invaluable resource not just for the north-west but for the whole country, rivalled only by the British Library in Camden, north London."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/22/manchester-central-library-book-pulping

The letter of protest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/22/manchester-central-library-book-pulping

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

appalling, truly appalling amateur51! ...and how typical of our modern age!

[Flosshilde]

On the other hand, as an ex-librarian I can sympathise with the problem - it's just not possible to continue expanding storage space to cope with an increasing stock. Material has to be withdrawn and disposed of. Even the British Library does it.

Perhaps the university professors should talk to their own librarians about how they manage similar demands on space in their own libraries. And how accessible are those libraries to the public?

[amateur51]

On the other hand, as an ex-librarian I can sympathise with the problem - it's just not possible to continue expanding storage space to cope with an increasing stock. Material has to be withdrawn and disposed of. Even the British Library does it.

Perhaps the university professors should talk to their own librarians about how they manage similar demands on space in their own libraries. And how accessible are those libraries to the public?

Ah I see, Flossie. But 210,000 seems rather a lot of books, especially when you imagine that the new library will be more capacious than its predecessor.

Or am I being naive again?

[JFLL]

On the other hand, as an ex-librarian I can sympathise with the problem - it's just not possible to continue expanding storage space to cope with an increasing stock. Material has to be withdrawn and disposed of. Even the British Library does it.

Perhaps the university professors should talk to their own librarians about how they manage similar demands on space in their own libraries. And how accessible are those libraries to the public?

Well, as another ex-librarian who perforce had to face similar problems, I might want to consider whether some of that £170m could have been spent on finding relatively low-rental storage outside central Manchester to preserve the book stock which had been built up by previous generations of librarians. As Jeanette Winterson said, "there is no reason why material that can't be kept on site can't be catalogued and warehoused elsewhere". Books, not high-profile restorations, are after all the raison d'être of libraries. But "even though this massive cull of books could represent up to 50% of the total stock, there are no subject specialists involved in the process." Subject specialists = the people who know what is expendable and what not, in other words the people who are called upon to exercise thought and judgement (old-fashioned virtues) independently of managerialist criteria.

[MrGongGong]

My local library used to have copies of
Daphne Orams An Individual note
and
Karkoschka's Notation in New Music

i used to try to borrow them both at least once a year in the hope that they would keep them (along with some other texts that I would consider essential for music research)

however , they are now no longer there
and they "don't know" what happened to them
as not many people borrowed them they have been "disposed of"


the last time I looked the Karkoschka was selling for about £150 a copy
and the Oram , well try typing that into Amazon (a bit overpriced as I have a pdf copy but you get the idea !)

[Lateralthinking1]

I am not sure that I like the building much:

It is one of Vincent Harris's most confident, assured and bombastic essays in the Roman Imperial manner (Clare Hartwell)

And that during the Depression. Now during another one, a costly restoration project.

I also doubt whether I trust those involved. Can we be absolutely sure that it is to be a library in the future? And why can't the books, if they are duplicates etc, either be offered for sale or sent to countries which would appreciate them?

The campaigners have my support.

[johnb]

I have very, very fond memories of studying in Manchester Central Reference Library when I was revising for (physics) finals, some 45 years ago. The catalogue and stock of books was extremely good indeed - you filled in a card with the books you needed, handed it to the desk at the centre of the domed reading room and, some time later, a man would trundle a cart round with your books.

Around the domed reading room there was an additional circular area with long tables, etc and that is where I always worked, as shown here) but the domed room (shown here) always lifted my heart as I passed through it.

As for the pulping of 210,000 non-fiction books it sounds horrendous but it is difficult to judge without actually knowing the detail of what the selection criteria are. It would be horrendous if Manchester Central Ref were to become something like the (abysmal, in comparison) Bristol Central Library.