They had a special shelf out with selected books on it that have not been borrowed for 5 years (or something like that, I forget the time). None of those books appear to be interesting to me. So that leaves me wondering, would you prefer it if your library did more of this? And if the goal of doing this was figuring out if a book should remain in the collection, isn’t all the time and effort required to set these aside already a sign that they should go? And is this the best way to maximize the value our librarians provide for us? I would think not, but am wondering if any of your libraries do this, or what displays are common elsewhere?
My library has never had a special shelf for books that haven’t been borrowed in a long time. If a book is old and rarely or never checked out then they sell it for between 25 cents and two dollars. I think that if a book hasn’t been borrowed for five years then it is a waste of time and effort putting it on a special shelf for the same result. It would be more cost effective for the library to just sell it to someone who decides they want it, even if it’s at an extremely low price, because they can clear out the space for books that people do read. While I don’t actually like the idea of getting rid of books, or a library not having every book available for people to read if they so wish, I understand that this is not practical and their resources would be better spent on removing the books rather than a last ditch effort to get them borrowed.