I’ve completed thinning out my library according to the guidelines I published earlier. Several associates, teachers and mentees have perused the boxes. Some books were displayed on our yard sale as well. However, few lookers took more than a small handful. Seems like I remember coming away from such opportunities 20 years ago with armloads. But the internet, the availability of cheap books and the busyness of contemporary life has created a different day. So far JoAnne and I are finding that the demand for used books is very small. A few classic authors were still desired. But most who looked at the books said they already had too many books and didn’t have room for more. There will still be opportunity to look over some of my books of books for a couple days. I will probably start disposing of them early this next week so I can start packing the shelved ones to go to CT.
At this time in my life, as I get ready to move, and try to sort through the accumulations of 22 years living in one house, I’m reminded of the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4-6 (NIV)
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: …
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away…
This has been particularly obvious as the time has come for my wife and me to sort through our libraries. While the parsonage that we are moving into may have more square footage than the current one, the amount of book space and office space may be less. That is because my office will now be in the parsonage as opposed to having a separate office in the church. In addition, there is the simple issue of weight. Movers charge by the weight of the shipment and books are heavy; so it is best to take only what you will need. Furthermore, there is the whole issue of what is happening in our culture with regard to books; books you hold are slowly losing ground to electronic ones. A few weeks ago we sorted out four or five boxes of used books from our home and took them to two used-book stores. One bookstore owner sorted out a few and paid us about enough to buy one new paperback; the other did not want any. So we donated the rest to the Salvation Army. A great deal of this is due to the rise of electronic books. As a result of these facts, my wife and I have set a goal to downsize our libraries by at least one third.
How are we doing it? Here are some guidelines we’ve used to achieve the goal.
If I haven’t read it in all these years, is it going to make it to the top of my list anytime soon? I’m giving away some brand new books because I felt the answer to that question was “no.”
Is this a reference book that I do not need to use any more because I have access to the material in a program or on-line? My Bible program has replaced several of my books, including at least one set.
Will this book help one of those I have been mentoring more than it will help me? If so, let it go.
Is this a book I do not need because by a combination of experience and material I have read, I have covered the material? If so, I should let the book help someone else, even if it is one I have valued in the past.
Is this a book I have quoted often and will probably continue to cite? If so I should keep it.
Everyone has favorite authors. I’m keeping almost all the books by my three or four favorite authors – John Maxwell, Jim Cymbala, E. Stanley Jones, Bruce Wilkinson.
Is the book outdated? Unless an older book is by a famous person, it will not be that useful to quote. A few may be useful to read anyway. They might be by someone else’s favorite author.
Is the book a classic I wish to pass down in my family? We don’t have many of these, but there are a few.
With these guidelines, I am getting it done, as the picture shows. My mentees and church teachers will be able to choose from the sorted books before we figure out what to do with the rest.
Yesterday, I was looking for a fact that I had used before concerning the early Greek documents of the Bible. I walked from shelf to shelf in the library lining my office but did not see what I was looking for. Mildly irritated that I could not find it quickly, I initiated a Google search and found information even more up-to-date than what I had been looking for in my library. I stopped momentarily to reflect on what had just happened. It occurred to me that what was happening on my desk through the computer and the Internet was rendering my library, painstakingly collected over decades, obsolete. I thought about the Greek and Hebrew references that I seldom use because I can access similar versions stored on my hard drive much more quickly.
Today, on the news, I read an article that may well report the trend that will be the stake in the heart of libraries like mine and maybe bigger ones too.
The news reported that Amazon is now selling more electronic books than physical books and this only four years after they started selling electronic books. This means the transition from physical books that you hold to versions that you watch on the screen is accelerating more than we had imagined.
I stop to think a little about what this means. What will happen to the thousands of books that people like me have collected? Will no one want them– preferring instead electronic versions? Will there be no bookshelves in houses–only screens? Will libraries become simply banks of computer servers rather than repositories of actual books? Certainly the transition that this marks is epochal.
