Library course textbooks. Keep or sell?

Hi guys! Into my last semester of library tech studies and I'm selling off some of my used books. I've been hedging over a couple though, mainly my Abridged Dewey Decimal (15th Edition). Has anyone found it useful to hang onto textbooks? Outside of a couple particular moments, saving my literary ones didn't get me much and I sold them later anyway, and I know a lot of cataloging sources are now online. Is my print 15th Ed Dewey going to be out of date in the next few years anyway? I also have a book of examples of RDA and AACR2 records. I know AACR2 is being phased out, but the examples have been handy for reference.

Thoughts?

15 years out of library school (archives specialization) and I still have everything. I have seldom referred back to most of what I used for classes.

Now, for me it is a general thing ... I am a "keeper," though I am trying to get better. :) I still have my Calculus textbooks from my first freshman year in college (1981), and I really never referred back to it (or most other text books) again. I think there is a semi-conscious fear that at some point I might need to remember or relearn something, or dig deeper ... or, in many cases, I never had a chance to really read the material thoroughly and I might have time to get back to it.

It isn't always useful and it can be harmful. A bad side-effect of acquiring and maintaining a personal library is if you move around, especially when young, single and mobile. I moved every year for a few years, and I had 55 boxes of books that moved with me. The number of friends who were willing to help me move dwindled every year. :)

I think that you need to evaluate your personal library on a case-by-case basis, and review those decisions periodically. Librarything can actually be a very useful tool for this. Create a couple of personal tags that you use to keep track of whether you have actually used your text books over the next few years. When you do your next review ... if it hasn't been touched / tagged, you can sell it off.

References to cataloging and classification systems have a limited shelf life if you are going to use them for a professional job, and it is also reasonable to expect that if you will need them for work that your employer will buy they ... unless you are an independent consultant or working as a volunteer in a library without a budget, in which case having your own copies will help. In the former case, buying your own is a deductible business expense, in the latter, you can lend your copy to the library indefinitely and then not have the storage problem, and always can go back to visit and look something up.

It also depends on where you live. If you are (or plan to be) living in a large metropolitan area with multiple universities and good public libraries, almost everything you need can be found on the shelves of their libraries, some might even circulate. If you end up in a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere, your personal library might be the only resource you have.

Enough said ... hope this gives you some food for thought.

_rob_

18 yrs out of lib school and I still have most of my textbooks...and never refer to them. I should just ditch them. They are unlikely to be of interest to anyone & are taking up space I could use.

>1 WeeTurtle: I wouldn't be in a rush to eliminate books before you've been out of school for a bit. You don't know what will be useful until you have had a chance to get your feet wet (so to speak). I took a FORTRAN class on a whim my last semester, and then decided to hang onto the book, on the theory that it was just another book on the shelf, and why not keep it around. Later on, when everything was being audited for Y2K issues, it was worth keeping.

I still have it. References for FORTRAN IV are handy, now and then.

https://www.librarything.com/work/4818645/book/105370690

But I digress.

When I retired, I spent a long time thinning out my library. There were books that I left at work on the premise that everyone was always borrowing them, and I was very sure I wouldn't use them. There were books that were groundbreaking in their day (in various fields, such as Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence), and I took those to the central library in LA (I lived in Southern California at the time), and told them that they could keep them, sell them, or toss them. I believe they kept most of them.

I sold off a lot of obscure things that I'd collected over the years, and I reduced the paperbacks (mostly SF) by 3/4 or more. I kept technical books that I felt would continue to be useful, or that I loved too much to let vanish. Will I ever use a book on PKI again? Very doubtful. I'm still keeping the one I have about it.

Here's the thing with *your* books: I'm sure that you already have some idea of which books you have that you are sure you won't open again, and a lot of others that just seem in the way. I'd note which books will be difficult to replace, down the road, and consider just putting them off in a storage container (made out of plastic, not cardboard).

In the end, though, it's really up to you. Just don't be too quick, or too ruthless, right away. :-}

I donated my library school textbooks to the library I was working in after I graduated, and then 20 years later I weeded them.

Heh.

So I sold them off as I doubted I've be using them again, and now I've put the money into expanding my children's book collection. I seem to have accidentally directed myself into kids' things which is in my favour as working with kids is apparently the skill in highest demand right now in my area. Is it like this elsewhere?

Hung onto my Online Searching book, which by chance was also a good choice as I'm starting my practicum this term and database knowledge has been an area of concern with practicum students, according to the staff they've been working with. Not sure what that really encompasses but I'll brush up on it.