Book Collecting, Gifting and Burning

Print books can take up a lot of space.   By reducing your collection of print paper books, it is a fast way to reduce the amount of stuff in any room that houses a medium to large collection.  

First things first.  It is good to set collection goals for books by what you consider as important and more importantly what is not!   Having an end goal limit of how big your book collection is going to be by such things as practical shelf space (and room for growth) can help set your goals on what books to keep, give away, sell or discard in the trash.   

Photo credit to BrewBooks

Here are some general removal guidelines.  

But before you start truly purging books to create free space, consider grouping like books with likes.   For example put dictionaries, cookbooks, mysteries (maybe it is a mystery as to what a books is about), books by genre or purpose together or next to each other in piles that make sense to you.   Then conclude how many books per topic or genre you want to keep.  Do you need 10 on the same topic of gardening?  Sometimes 3 or 4 on any given topic is enough maybe for your level of interest in a topic.  

If your can answer yes to any or all of these questions, it might be time to get rid of a print book....

- Is a book sentimental, but not something your going to likely look at again anytime in the near future (next 5 years) or even longer?

- The book is not the soul source of information on this topic and can be found elsewhere and more likely in a more up to date format?

- It lacks the qualities of holding my attention long enough for me to finish it the first time I tried to read it over a period of weeks or months?

- I or someone else paid a lot of money for they book?  AND Ultimately, I'm concerned that this will be like throwing away money for something I *might* read down the line.  Also I will not likely need it again?

- The book lacks true meaning or has little historical worth to me, family or friends?

One way to avoid the regret of taking a book out of your collection is capturing the title, ISBN number and format of the work so that if and in the event you would like to have the work again, you'll probably able to get a copy thru your local library or their InterLibrary Loan service.

My experience yesterday was partially liberarting purge of a box of books from home.  The box had been squirreled away into a storage space thinking that someday, when I get time, I'll finish or re-read these.  Well, after (3+-) years that 'someday' never came and only a handful of those books I completely read or re-read a couple of times with moderate enjoyment.  Yeah one more box out the door.