You see, I was asked last week by our university Librarian to review books that she wants to withdraw from the collection.
I teach at a small university with about 2800 students, most of whom are in the health sciences and business, with only a few in the humanities and social sciences. The reason the Librarian gave for the purge was that the books selected for elimination had not been checked out in thirty or more years, and that they needed to move them to make room. But it does not seem that that is the case that they will buy as many books to replace them – that the stacks are being culled to make room for electronic resources, or other non-textual uses.Still, I agree that some books reluctantly need to go. If a book goes thirty, forty or even fifty years without being checked out, it may need to relinquish its place to something more relevant. A number of volumes were actually collections of primary source documents, most of which have now merged onto online formats, making them far easier for students to access. In these cases, the convenience of document collections compiled in the 1960s are really just like our internet accessibility now. One could easily imagine the editors of such physical books now just putting the docs and links on a website, and getting far more student use out of it. Same with multiple editions of works, often textbooks, which do not really need to be in a small university library.