I have a lot of books. In hard copy. About a decade ago I pledged that no hard copy books would enter my home by my hand. But still I have the ones I accumulated in the previous 40 or so years. The university era was the worst.
Before I moved I culled. I took several boxes to Black Squirrel. However I overestimated how much space I would have for them.
And now I must be more ruthless.
The criteria:
Is the book available digitally. If yes, donate. I can reacquire the book if need be.
Has the political moment passed? A brilliant book by Linda McCuaig about interest rates and budget deficits in the Stephen Harper era was compelling reading that galvanized me into action in my 30s or 40s. But we’re so far past that now and unless I take up a second (third) career as a student of Canadian political history it’s not relevant. To someone else it might be. Histories of the RCMP’s overreaching surveillance and dirty deeds in the 60s and 70s. Facebook does worse every day. Donate them.
Am I likely to refer to it again? I have a lot of books about Central American politics in the 1980s and the history of colonialism there. I’ve read them and used them to write one or several papers on related issues in the 1980s. But I will never crack them open again. I feel like having them in my library is a way of bearing witness to the great violence neo-colonialism and the cold war wrought on these people. But if no one else ever sees these titles, how am I actually bearing witness? Donate.
Is it written by Noam Chomsky? Huge frigging fan for most of my life. I believe he’s one of the most brilliant minds to grace this planet in generations. But I cannot get past the idea that he stayed friends with Jeffrey Epstein after his 2008 conviction for sex with a minor. It doesn’t cancel out his genius or his writing but I can’t put him on my shelves. Plus see above re: political moments passing. As much as I believe his critique of American Imperialism was accurate and fair, current events have surpassed by a wide margin what he then described as the most depraved incidents in America’s history. Box and store.
Is Mallory likely to want to read it? Not she should want to read it. Our ideas align on many things but she has her own focus.
Is it still relevant? I have a lot of books about print design. They’re really good. Seminal, in fact. But the world isn’t making any more print designers and the trade itself is shrinking faster than Donald Trump’s approval rating. Cull. Keep the pretty ones. They look good on a shelf and may provide distraction.
Is there a personal connection? Do I know the author? Is it about someone I know? Is the book signed? A small collection but an important one. Keep.
Are they Important Books™? I still hear people referring to Howard Zinn’s a People’s History of the United States. Douglas Coupland’s Generation X defined a generation (mine) to say nothing of defining how people label generations and think about the relation between birth year and behaviour. Robert Fisk understood and explained the history of the Middle East better than anyone — even Chomsky. Keep.
How obscure is the subject matter? I have a bunch of books that trace the history of Marxist thought from 1848 to the mid 20th century. Both analysis of and works by political theorists like Herbert Marcuse, Jurgen Habermas, Antonio Gramsci, etc etc. They were a slog back then. I am not likely to refer to them again. They are Important Books™ but in contemporary argot they are so niche.
It would help enormously if it was economical (for me, anyway) to digitize books. But a destructive scan and OCR of a 300 page book is somewhere between $40 and $100. For me that is out of range. If it were even around what the book might cost, were it still in print, it would mean that my only criteria would be: (a) do they fit the shelf and (b) are they pretty? But by my count that would be several thousand dollars just in case the mood strikes me or my progeny to read or reference them some time in the future.
And I just… can’t.