Annex
Some Observations on the Sale of Books
by Public Libraries by David Alexander, Historian, Lecturer, exhibition
organiser, Member, Editorial Board, Print Quarterly
I write as a historian and collector of prints
and books who has observed with mounting dismay the dispersal
of books from public libraries, particularly in the last twenty-five
years. Hundreds of thousands of books have been sold, generally
for derisory sums, or dumped. The general situation was set out
by W J West in The Strange Rise of Semi-Literate Britain,
Duckworth, 1984. I believe very strongly in the continuing value
of public libraries, the opportunities they provide for people
to widen their reading and learn more about literature and culture,
and the special role of their reference collections. Despite the
spread of the Internet books should continue to be at the heart
of the public library. It seems to me that in the future the dispersals
which have taken place will come to be seen to be a tragic error,
not just because of the loss of reference materials but also because
of the intrinsic interest of many of the books and of their role
in cultural history. Great collections of books, including ones
made by the Victorian pioneers of public libraries, have been
destroyed, in several cases, eg in Cardiff, where there was a
sudden demand for library space for new subject areas, they were
simply put onto skips. In many cases books given to institutions
by well-wishers have been sold without any attempt having been
made to pass them to another institution; a notorious example
of this was an important collection of Gloucestershire topographical
and antiquarian books given to Gloucester Public Library, sold
about ten years ago. However the aim of this memo is not so much
to make general points but to describe one individual's experience.
For the last 40 years I have lived in York,
which in this time has become an important centre of the antiquarian
booktrade. In that time one of the major changes has been the
increased proportion of books in the trade which are "ex-libris".
For understandable reasons booksellers, many of whom have made
large sums of money selling these books to other institutions,
do not in their catalogues generally name the libraries from which
they have come. Formerly a bookseller receiving a library book
without a "de-accession" stamp would make an attempt
to return it, on the grounds that it may have been stolen; nowadays,
unless it is an obviously rare volume, he is more likely to assume
that it has escaped stamping when being sold. This applies throughout
the country. Living in York has provided two particular forms
of evidence of what has been happening in public libraries, first
in York's own central library, which I have used since 1961, and
secondly in the country as a whole, since the disposal of large
numbers of surplus books sent from all parts of Britain to the
British Library at Boston Spa has taken place bi-annually on University
of York premises.
York Central Library, built with Carnegie money
in the 1920s, had a fine and up-to-date reference library until
the city ceased to be a county borough in 1974. It then became
a branch library run by North Yorkshire County Council, and the
reference library naturally reflected this, though one part of
the lending library, namely the Music Library, was built up by
the Music Librarian into a very respectable collection. Most users
of the library were unaware of the range and importance of the
reference library's stock, which included many books which had
been part of the York Subscription Library founded in the 1790s,
as well as many books transferred from the Yorkshire Philosophical
Society. There is a card index of the collection in the reading
room, but no efforts have ever been made to draw wider attention
to the resources of the library, for example to the attention
of members of the University, founded in the 1970s, and there
is no duplicate card index of its holdings at the University,
let alone any computerised system. Nor has any publication been
produced on the interesting history of the city library. Recently
a considerable number of antiquarian books, including ones given
by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, have been disposed of,
tenders were invited from a few local booksellers and they have
been sold to a Harrogate bookseller. No list is available for
the public of what has been sold, and it is uncertain whether
a careful inventory, noting the provenances of the books, was
taken. As yet the cards for many of them have not been removed
from the card index; I became aware of what was going on because
I in the autumn asked for a book for which there was still a card
but which could not be found in stock; subsequently to this incident
a notice appeared apologising in advance to readers who might
ask for a book which had been sold.
Over the years many thousands of books of reference
value, both from the lending library and from the Reference Library,
have been sold, generally at 40 or 50p, sometimes more for art
books. The lowest I have paid was 20p for Mary Kingsley's West
African Studies, Macmillan, 1899, a book which it would now
cost the library £50 to replace—the most £4 for
Rudolf Wittkower's Gian Lornzo Bernini, Phaidon, 2nd ed,
1966, with its incomparable illustrations. I also acquired the
first volume of John Pope-Hennessey's Italian Renaissance Sculpture;
when my wife wanted to consult the second volume it had to
be obtained by the library through Inter Library Loan. In all
I have acquired at least 400 non-fiction works of academic value
from this library. Until about 10 years ago there were regular
sales, lasting a week or so; now the books are dribbled out on
a regular basis on "for sale" shelves. A high proportion
of the music reference books have been disposed of. Although I
wrote last year to the library authorities to suggest that they
first be offered to the University, which has a flourishing music
department, the suggestion was not acted upon; among 10 music
books which I have subsequently five were not in the University
Library, to which I have now given them. On occasions it has been
the practice of the library staff to tear out the title page of
a book before it is placed on sale, rather than make a note of
its title, in order to know which card to remove from the card
index. This treatment has been meted out to quite valuable books,
eg E B Havell's Indian Architecture, John Murray, ?1914,
which I purchased for 40p in 1999.
The widespread failure of libraries to offer
books they wish to dispose of to other local institutions was
brought home to me about five years ago. Scunthorpe Museum spent
a large amount of money with a London print dealer to acquire
a group of large hand-coloured prints of antiquities made in the
early 19th century by John Fowler, a builder from Winterton, which
is near Scunthorpe. Shortly afterwards I bought from an antiquarian
book dealer one of the original albums put together and sold by
Fowler himself which had just been sold by Grimsby Public Library.
Many libraries, particularly university ones,
have in recent years sent surplus books and periodicals which
are not obviously saleable to the British Library at Boston Spa.
Those books judged to be worthy of finding another home have been
placed onto the BLDSC Booknet and details of them have been circulated
to other libraries who can acquire them. However this is an expensive
business for Boston Spa and many books are disposed of without
any attempt being made to place them. There is a skip for their
reception at Boston Spa, from which on one occasion I was able
to rescue a run of bound 1980s Apollo Magazine. In any
case the Booknet finds new homes for only a proportion of the
books and in recent years much of the residue have been sent to
be sold in aid of the charity Feed the Minds, which has held two
sales a year disposing of around 10,000 books a time over five
days. These are sold at £1.20 each the first one or two days,
with the price reduced to 60p, then 30p and finally 15p on successive
days, with the unsold remainder sent to a dump. There is not time
for the books to be checked by the University Library and the
majority are bought by members of the University. On the final
days I have been able to save considerable numbers of books; many
of Roman Catholic interest I have given to the Bar Convent Library.
Few of the books which are destroyed are without merit, and it
is in many cases only later that I discover the interest of the
ones I have salvaged; it may lie for example in the quality of
their letterpress printing, in their provenance or library book-plate,
in the publisher's advertisements at the back, in the binder's
or bookseller's ticket, or in the artistic merit of their book-jacket
(of which I have a large collection and organised an exhibition
Saved from the Waste-Paper Basket, Wolfson College, Oxford).
It is inevitable that libraries should find
that they should have books which no longer justify the space
they occupy, for example multiple copies of books removed from
reading lists. However one effect of the Internet, which in many
cases is being used as a justification for disposing of books,
either on the grounds that the information they contain can be
obtained electronically, or to make space for IT facilities, is
likely to raise awareness of books. Those libraries which place
information about their holdings of books onto the Intenet will
find that people will want to look at them. This will not necessarily
be because of the information which they contain but because of
the interest of the books themselves, both as objects repaying
study and as part of the cultural history; it is not an exaggeration
to say that both publishing and library history are in their infancy
in this country. In the future the study of city libraries, of
the growth of academic studies and of the output publishing houses
and printers will undoubtedly increase.
March 2000
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