People are NOT welcome to come down and browse through the books at the Saxo Institute that are to sent to destruction. This is according to Gunnar Lind, chairman of the department's library.
»We just don't have the ressources to handle it,« he explains.
The first books are down in the cellar in a skip, a large container, waiting to be taken away by lorry to destruction. As of now, it is mostly out of date handbooks and bibliographical works, that are in the pile.
Recycled or burnt
The Saxo Institute library is one of four department libraries, that will destroy books to make shelf space before moving into a new knowledge centre in 2013. The controversial move will entail the destruction of two kilometres of shelf space.
»We estimate 40 books a shelf metre, and this gives a 80,000 book figure,« Gunnar Lind says.
He is unaware as to whether some of the books will actually be recycled, but it is likely that large numbers of books will be burnt at an incinerator.
Inevitably, some quality books will go
We have started putting some books into the skip, but the whole process will take a year and a half, and we are still planning how we are going to carry out the operation, he says to the University Post.
He hopes that the teaching staff at the Saxo Institute will help sort the books for quality.
»Inevitably, some books will go that are valuable to someone, but we will do our utmost to prevent it from happening,« he says.
No book sale or giveaway
A book sale or giveaway is out of the question with the personnel ressources that the Saxo Institute has available, according to Gunnar Lind. The money coming out of it, would not cover the costs.
»People forget that the major part of costs in a library is the organisation, and we cannot as yet find a way to let the costs of a sale or giveaway be offset by the costs of processing it,« he says.
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Comments
Ok. So there are resources.
Ok. So there are resources. There is an economic gain for the institute if we sell the books. Then we are left with this:
"the books cannot be sold is because they were purchased with state money"
Shouldn't be a problem, since the University is also state funded. I think I just may give Gunnar a call :)
There has to be another way
According to this article, "A book sale or giveaway is out of the question with the personnel resources," while according to another article & quotation, the reason the books cannot be sold is because they were purchased with state money. These are two conflicting reasons.
If the real reason that the books cannot be sold is because it is a question of resources, why not allow the many people against the book-burning a chance to put their words into action? The facebook group against the burning already has over 2.500 people & is growing. I am sure there are plenty of students, past & present, who would donate their time to a book sale.
All books can be sold at 20DKK -- quite reasonably priced, even for students & it eliminates having to individually price each book.
70.000 books x 20 DKK = 1.400.000 DKK, which can go directly back to the Saxo Institute. This money could put used to fund at least 1 PhD stipend (and beyond) within Saxo, a place where more money for research is especially lacking, in comparison to other departments at KU.
This would eliminate sheer waste of book burning. It would get rid of the "lack of resource" problem. It would cycle money directly back to Saxo. And it could make at least one potential researcher's dream a financial reality.
Riiight. Not enough
Riiight. Not enough resources.
http://universitypost.dk/article/university-turns-surprise-160m-profit
Not to mention all of the Humanities students who would be happy to organise the book sale/giveaway at no cost to the university!
Depends how you define resources I suppose. They may actually mean: "We have no economic incitement to dispose of the books in a sensible and sustainable way".
1 volunteer here!
And I'm no longer a student.
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