Petter Reinholdtsen

Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?
3rd October 2012

I just read the blog post from Tim Retout about the computer science book collection available in his local library, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the recently published books.

During my university years, I worked for a while at the university library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading, and the books I knew were classics (like most of the Stevens collection). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class. I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books for the library that evening.

The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is going to know that for example The Practice of Programming is a must-have in any computer library, and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy. Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite book right away.

Tags: english.

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