Last Day

Today is my last day of work and I am completely at peace with my decision. The library is changing faster than I'm able or want to keep pace with. The big change today was the decimation of our collection. All agencies are required to reduce their collection by 25% within the next week. I predict there will be some librarians taking heavy doses of pain relievers next week.  This is being done to facilitate a change to floating collections and to accommodate face- out shelving and RFID  tag installation. Yeah, that last expensive little process doesn't have board approval yet. Collections will be built by popular demand.  This means different things to different people. It strikes terror into my old hippie heart. I watched the MLS children's librarian sweating and almost crying while purging and packing  relatively new books from the collection to be transferred to the Main Library where they'll either be added to the storage collection or digitized by Internet Archive sometime within the next decade. The whole purpose of this change is to modernize the library and to make it more relevant. Apparently being a print book lover makes me somewhat of a Luddite, Well, I'd just like to give this little illustration, there was an alphabet book, Accidental Zucchini authored by Max Grover  that I brought home from work  for my boys when they were teeny. I didn't think it was that great, but my boys loved the bizarre imagery, and through their enjoyment I came to love it too. When I saw how battered and loved the library's copy was becoming I tried to replace it, but learned it was not only out of print, but also  there were sellers on Amazon trying to sell paperback copies of it for $50. Children's books don't stay in print very long so I've always tried to encourage parents to buy copies of beloved children's books while they still can. I  was overjoyed when I found an almost pristine used copy for myself at Hyde Bros. Bookstore. If either of my boys do ever have children, I'll gift it to them for a nostalgic little treat. My point is that it seems so careless to weed a library collection so abruptly and ruthlessly, even if materials are digitized. I sincerely don't believe that print books will disappear in my lifetime, that there are too many people who share my attitude about holding a book in their hands.