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[KingofstarrySkies]

Again, at the very least, just put them in storage or give them to someone.

[NJW2000]

Keep them in your basement, next to the beans and the chainsaw and the comics and the condoms, is my advice. Gotta have all bases covered for when the bomb goes off.

[Rolan7]

But what about people who don't have spare storage?  Also, books seem to get heavier with every move, particularly when it's a yearly thing.

What we ought to have is some sort of publicly funded book repository system where people can conveniently borrow and return the books.  Might even be a sort of social hub.  I'd totally donate my burdensome books to a place like that.

[Frumple]

Yeah... if only we had those, and they had funding and space.

S'kinda' sad, really. I've helped out at the local library* a bit, off and on, and we've had times where the shelves were so packed you could pull out one book and bring the rest of the row with it, and that's with stuff put on top of the books, sideways, too. And the sorting thingy filled. And overflow boxes. And stuff just kinda' laying around. And excess stuff regularly being shipped over to nearby (somewhat larger) libraries (who also don't have space :V).

... my old/spare books are in the barn, right now. Would have to travel a few hours to find a library that has space on the shelves

Incidentally, if you don't want old library books to get thrown out, I'd recommend checking them out somewhat regularly. The culling tends to start with stuff that hasn't been borrowed in years.

*E: Being fair, said library is... smaller than the house I'm living in right now, and most other buildings in the (rural, two caution light) town. Not a large building, not much in terms of resources, etc.

[Rolan7]

Yeah, my library had plenty of *books*, not so much the space or funding.  Hence the book sales in the yard outside.
Pretty tragic.  Though now that they (I assume, I moved a lot) have public-access computers, it's marginally enough that a copy of each book is preserved *somewhere*.  Which is absolutely a federal responsibility, IMHO.

[penguinofhonor]

Don't libraries send a ton of books to get recycled? They're not a good option if you want to avoid that.

[NJW2000]

Charity shops recyle tons of books too, but now there's this thing called a "Book Bridge" project where Chinese kids whose schools have been destroyed by earthquakes and have no books get a bunch of random ones shipped over to their country and put online, and they can then discuss them with US and English students. Should check up on it, actually, my English teacher told me about it. Oh, and there's this thing where they learn English in a week or something.

[Frumple]

Don't libraries send a ton of books to get recycled? They're not a good option if you want to avoid that.

Recycled, trashed, burnt... yeah, more or less. Extra copies of books already in the system, stuff that hasn't been touched for years, occasionally material that's a bit excessive for public purview -- libraries only have a certain amount of space, a certain amount of funds to be dedicated towards maintaining old books, and they're kinda' working under a mandate to provide for their public. Stuff has to be cycled out pretty regularly.

Mind you, they're still one of the better places to keep at least a copy of a text around (if not necessarily the copy you donate) -- not many other options exist that have the same degree of expertise and facilities for keeping texts around, and at least in my experience most libraries really try to keep as many texts as they can, there's just pretty hard limits to what that "can" is.

Basically, they're not exactly a good option, they're just one of the least bad ones.

[Tack]

Clearly we should create a capitalist library.
Screw the government, pay for your book-storage!

[Eric Blank]

We have two acres of open ground for the dogs to crap on.

The dog prefers to crap on the tiny bit of mown "lawn" so wtf?

Fucking pansy.

[Frumple]

Clearly you must booby trap the mown lawn, such that every time the dog walks on it, the animal is catapulted off into the open ground.

Please record any and all tests and successful activations.

[hops]

Clearly we should create a capitalist library.
Screw the government, pay for your book-storage!

I honestly wish there were more subscription libraries.

We have some in Bangkok. They're making a killing despite the fact that statistically, Thai people only read 6 sentences a year (it's some shitty stat though because it doesn't account for the fact that more than half of the country's population is illiterate).

[Sergarr]

more than half of the country's population is illiterate

what the

[Eric Blank]

Thailand, that's what.

[hops]

more than half of the country's population is illiterate

what the

Developing countries, bruv.

Thailand happens to be on the lower end.