BookIT

I faced one of the giant elephants in the room, over 40 years of accumulated books and sundry media.

We are thinking of downsizing now that our house is too big for two people.  The elephant needed to be contained and the upcoming library sale provides an external stimulus.  

My 'library' is near 50 years of accumulated material in a plethora of topics, undergraduate work in Economics, grad school work in mathematics, systems science and electrical engineering and Sociology, and careers as a professor, systems engineer and information technology consultant.  I'm not talking about old Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann books, but volumes on mathematical models of group behavior, fiscal policy, nonlinear programming, stochastic processes, histories of Spain in the 1930s, theory of public policy and arcane computer languages.

Emptying the book shelves and near countless boxes is a quasi-emotional experience, bringing back memories, especially how did you understand and know the material in the book at a given time and remembering what you forgot.  (The cost in current dollars of the education expenses and courses that used the books and tuition and fees for specialized courses could well pay for a reasonable summer second home.)

My guiding rule for deciding to keep something is a combination of if I will ever need the material again, if the 'facts' I need are available on the Internet (greatly reducing needed history books and classic literature) and if the book is just dated.

The books also were stuffed with old newspaper clippings, reports and printouts, some totally wrong in retrospect such as a 2000 Government report on the world in 2015 with little or no mention of China as an economic powerhouse.  The occasionally found old picture brought back memories, and questions of why we ever wore clothes that looked liked that (early 70s especially) and different hair styles and hair colors.  Old work organizational charts brought back fleeting memories of past coworkers and those who are no longer here.

Boxes and bookcases were reduced to five shelves on a floor to ceiling bookcase.  

It is interesting to review what I kept, partly since it is too nostalgic to rid, and partly due to my rationalization it's possible future use to historians.  I can't part with my college dictionary despite its obsolescence given modern consumer electronics, my dog-eared copy of Strunk and White, some basic Economics texts, Thompson's Calculus and Analytical Geometry and a very old Sociology text given to me by my father over 50 years ago.  Of future use to the next generation may be a copy of the final Whole Earth Catalogue circa 1970, the 1976 (bicentennial) graphic Statistical Aspect of the United States, early World War II Reader’s Digests and 2005 issues of US News and World Reports and Time indicating the best leaders and most influential people (Oprah and Bill Gates make it, but what happened to and who is/was Luban Olayan? Dave Eggers? Shirley Franklin?)

The result is a defacto desert island list of books.  What surprised me, and possibly as I am in the seventh decade of life, is the most common topic, one of the five shelves, is religion related: old family bibles, prayer books, religious philosophies and assorted key works to others (The Koran, The Book of Mormon).  The second topic, about a third of a shelf, is history, especially those related to wars and current world trouble spots.  The relative size of the two shelves is an unobtrusive comment on civilization.  (The only 'new' topic, at a quarter of a shelf, is travel guides, which agrees with retirement.)  

If you can’t sleep at night, rather than counting sheep, count the books for your desert island.

It is to be hoped that after being culled by volunteers, many of the disposed books will be available at the forthcoming Chelmsford Public Library annual book sale.

My next adventure is to face the other elephant, thousands of records, tapes, CD and even 8 tracks: what to do about four copies of ‘Kind of Blue’ or ‘Bringing it All Back Home’.