Choosing books for a library like mine in New York is a full-time job. The head of acquisitions at the Society Library, Steven McGuirl, reads Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, The London Times, and The New York Times to decide which fiction should be ordered. … Of course, they [also] respond to members’ requests. If a book is requested by three people, the staff orders it. There’s also a committee of members that meets monthly to recommend books for purchase. … They want a full collection but don’t want to be saddled with books nobody reads.
Boosted by reviews, prizes, large sales, word of mouth, or personal recommendations, a novel may make its way onto the library shelf, but even then it is not guaranteed a chance of being read by any future generations. Libraries are constantly getting rid of books they have acquired. They have to, or they would run out of space. The polite word for this is “deaccession,” the usual word, “weeding.” I asked a friend who works for a small public library how they choose books to get rid of. Is there a formula? Who makes the decision, a person or a committee? She told me that there was a formula based on the recommendations of the industry-standard CREW manual.
CREW stands for Continuous Review Evaluation and Weeding … At the heart of the CREW method is a formula consisting of three factors—the number of years since the last copyright, the number of years since the book was last checked out, and a collections of six negative factors given the acronym MUSTIE, to help decide if a book has outlived its usefulness. M. Is it Misleading or inaccurate? Is its information, as so quickly happens with medical and legal texts or travel books, for example, outdated? U. Is it Ugly? Worn beyond repair? S. Has it been Superseded by a new edition or a better account of the subject? T. Is it Trivial, of no discernible literary or scientific merit? I. Is it Irrelevant to the needs and interests of the community the library serves? E. Can if be found Elsewhere, through interlibrary loan or on the Web? Obviously, not all the MUSTIE factors are relevant in evaluating fiction, notably Misleading and Superseded. Nor is the copyright date important. For nonfiction, the CREW formula might be 8/3/MUSTIE, which would mean “Consider a book for elimination if it is eight years since the copyright date and three years since it has been checked out and if one or more of the MUSTIE factors obtains.” But for fiction the formula is often X/2/MUSTIE, meaning the copyright date doesn’t matter, but consider a book for elimination if it hasn’t been checked out in two years and if it is TUIE—Trivial, Ugly, Irrelevant, or Elsewhere.
Transcribed by me from pages 163–5 of my first edition copy of The Shelf from LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading, © 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Tweet: Libraries often get rid of books. They have to, or they would run out of space.
Tweet: Did you have any idea how hard it is to stock a library well? I didn’t.
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Interesting – I wonder if there’s also a ‘political correctness’ factor at work?
For example, Robert Ruark’s “Something of Value”, his novel about the Mau Mau, reflected views of the independence movement in Africa that would certainly have been shouted down in the 60s, and would be anathema today.
Ditto for Mike Hoare’s memoir “Congo Mercenary”.
The authors were anything but racist; Hoare was an idealist who devoted the latter part of his life to protecting the inhabitants of the continent he loved, and Ruark was a journalist whose sincerity was beyond question (as was his craftsmanship).
I’m no longer well enough to go to my local library to check, but I’ll wager that both titles are long gone.
The librarians I know are the most open-minded people I know, and are very concerned with presenting as many books with as many viewpoints as possible. They are against censorship in all its many permutations.
This is just a small excerpt from a fascinating book that had a long chapter on the nature of libraries. I highly recommend it!