Library Tossing Out the Classics: No One Read ‘Em!

The bells may toll for Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls – a Washington-area library is tossing out books that haven’t been checked out in years.

Unfortunately, this means classics like books by Hemingway, Faulkner, Proust, and so on:

A software program developed by SirsiDynix, an Alabama-based library-technology company, informs librarians of which books are circulating and which ones aren’t. If titles remain untouched for two years, they may be discarded–permanently. "We’re being very ruthless," boasts library director Sam Clay.

As it happens, the ruthlessness may not ultimately extend to Hemingway’s
classic. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" could win a special reprieve, and, in the future, copies might remain available at certain branches. Yet lots of other volumes may not fare as well. Books by Charlotte Brontë, William Faulkner, Thomas Hardy, Marcel Proust and Alexander Solzhenitsyn have recently been pulled.

Library officials explain, not unreasonably, that their shelf space is limited and that they want to satisfy the demands of the public. Every unpopular book that’s removed from circulation, after all, creates room for a new page-turner by John Grisham, David Baldacci, or James Patterson–the authors of the three most checked-out books in Fairfax County last month.

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