British Library Admits
Weeding Books, Newspapers
The British Library has admitted disposing of 80,000 books in the past two years in keeping with a previously undisclosed weeding policy, the London Times reported August 11. Some of the books were found in London secondhand bookshops marked “British Library—withdrawn.”
The news follows a report last month that the library has also disposed of some 60,000 volumes of historic non-British newspapers, nearly 10% of its collection, in an effort to save space. The library offered the newspapers first to other libraries and museums, sold some at an unpublicized auction, and discarded the rest, according to an article by Nicholson Baker in the July 24 New Yorker.
The newspaper weeding cleared more than two miles of shelf space, but the library still receives copies of 2,500 British newspapers alone and the collection continues to grow at a rate of a half-mile a year.
Similarly, the book weeding has freed more than a mile of shelf space—which was filled again almost immediately because under copyright law, the library receives a copy of every new book published in Britain.
Posted August 14, 2000.
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