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Laura Marshall: Library and Information Association Executive Director on the National Library culling thousands of books · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: Multiple major religious texts will be shredded at the National Library.
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  Speaker 1: A number of books which include the Quran, the Bible
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  Speaker 1: and the Turrah will be destroyed and then recycled and
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  Speaker 1: this is to save one million dollars a year in
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  Speaker 1: storage costs. Laura Marshall is the executive director of the
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  Speaker 1: Library and Information Association of New Zealand and joints it
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  Speaker 1: now Good morning to you.
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  Speaker 2: Laura, Good morning.
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  Speaker 1: There's a few religious people around the place are a
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  Speaker 1: bit freaked out by this.
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  Speaker 2: It's standard religious policy at standard religious policy. Sorry, it's
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  Speaker 2: through early in the morning. It's standard collection policy. There'll
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  Speaker 2: be a policy on what's removed from collections. I don't
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  Speaker 2: know the policy of this particular place, but yeah, people
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  Speaker 2: just need to look into what is the collection policy,
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  Speaker 2: and it's a fairly standard collection management. All of these
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  Speaker 2: books are available at your local library and if people
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  Speaker 2: do want to read them, they can become members of
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  Speaker 2: their local library and they are available to read.
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  Speaker 1: So libraries always do culls because there's always used books
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  Speaker 1: and they end up full. So how do libraries decide
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  Speaker 1: which books to stay in which to go.
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  Speaker 2: It's very specific to the particular institute or the particular library.
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  Speaker 2: I used to be the library director of ODDA and
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  Speaker 2: we had a collection management policy. If it was one
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  Speaker 2: of those best sellers, when people stopped lending it, we
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  Speaker 2: used to call the box and get rid of them.
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  Speaker 2: If we kept every book that was published, we'd need
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  Speaker 2: a fifty story building, which is obviously not possible at all. However,
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  Speaker 2: in our heritage collection, same as the National Library, we
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  Speaker 2: kept books of significance. We keep multi collections, we keep
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  Speaker 2: local history collections. So it comes down to what is
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  Speaker 2: significant for that community, for that institute, and what's its
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  Speaker 2: mandate by usually as governing body, on what it should collect.
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  Speaker 1: Spreading seems a little bit violent, doesn't it. I mean
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  Speaker 1: that book has gone. Is that standard? Why don't we
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  Speaker 1: have a very big garret sale?
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  Speaker 2: It is standard because you get to the point where
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  Speaker 2: nobody wants the books. I used to be a second
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  Speaker 2: hand bookseller for fifteen years and I I have tredded
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  Speaker 2: so many books. It gets to a point where nobody
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  Speaker 2: wants to read it. It's times up and we need
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  Speaker 2: room for new books. Like I said, you need a
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  Speaker 2: fifty story building to put these to put these books in.
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  Speaker 2: So many times people would bring me the collections of
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  Speaker 2: their grandmar and say, oh, I don't want to throw
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  Speaker 2: these out, so I'm going to give these to you,
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  Speaker 2: and I'll be like, no, you have to throw them out.
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  Speaker 2: Why should I do it? It comes a point where
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  Speaker 2: books are not going to be read, and this is
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  Speaker 2: just great collection policy. All of these books are available
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  Speaker 2: somewhere else as well.
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  Speaker 1: And some of these books haven't been checked out in
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  Speaker 1: twenty or thirty years. Should they have even been bought
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  Speaker 1: in the first place.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, you do have to test the market, and you
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  Speaker 2: must remember some of these books are very old. So yeah,
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  Speaker 2: testing the market is part of good collection policy, and
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  Speaker 2: they're making a sound decision. As another I believe with
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  Speaker 2: this particular collection, at least fifty thousand of the books
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  Speaker 2: were offered to other libraries and were taken up. So
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  Speaker 2: some of these have gone to other library collections. I
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  Speaker 2: believe another fifty thousand weeks charity. And I can tell you,
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  Speaker 2: as an experienced bookseller who used to make money out
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  Speaker 2: of books, a lot of these books their time is up, unfortunately,
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  Speaker 2: and it's sad, but this is what we do to
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  Speaker 2: bring in new books. I think it is something like
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  Speaker 2: a million to two million books. Are published every year.
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  Speaker 2: Got to have room for these new collections. But be
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  Speaker 2: sured libraries do keep those heritage books, those out of print,
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  Speaker 2: those rare books, those books that are really special to
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  Speaker 2: a particular community. This is their skill and this is
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  Speaker 2: what they're great.
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  Speaker 1: He yes, stuff, Laura, I thank you so very very much.
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  Speaker 1: I don't need to take the Bible out from the
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  Speaker 1: library because I've got my family Bible, which came out
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  Speaker 1: on a boat and arrived in New Zealand in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: forty three. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: listen live to news Talks.
• 3:40
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• 3:44
  Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio.