Books, Who Needs ‘Em?

“Actual books are a total pain in the neck,” said Head of Reference Liam Hegarty. “You’ve got to catalog them, label them, put them on a shelf (in a specific place no less) and then you’ve got to keep track of them when someone borrows them.” Hegarty stressed that the Library was only discontinuing tangible books not the highly popular eBooks. He also said the collection would not disappear all at once. “The books will be deaccessioned over a period of time and in a thoughtful manner,” he said. “First we’ll eliminate trivial stuff like literary criticism and poetry. Nobody reads those. Then History, next Biography and so on until we get to our James Patterson section.” Patterson will be the most difficult, Hegarty explained. “He releases new books faster than we can throw them out,” he said.