I confess I also horde hoard¹ books. Some of this comes from growing up in a house with a Civil War devotee who'd been raised by bibliophiles. I learned how to carefully remove dust jackets while I read the book inside, how to read hardcover and paperbacks without breaking the spine (or unduly soiling the pages with oily fingers), and to always use a thin paper bookmark instead of turning page corners or (worse) placing the title upside down (with its spine facing up).

I learned all this before my age hit double digits, far before choosing a career, the development of the technical publishing industry, or a certain guy by the name of Tim Berners-Lee began wondering how nice it would be if colleagues could link their electronic documents together across a global network.

When I found my trade (as opposed to my calling), I began to hoard written knowledge, whether source code, utilities, books, magazine articles, conference proceedings, or what-have-you. (Somewhere in my archives, I have a stack of punchcards, a roll of punchtape, several dozen cassettes, and scores of floppies of all sizes, including at least one 8-inch CP/M disk.)

In short, I've always been an information junkie. Why? Because there are tidbits in that forgotten (and mostly unmountable) lore that are periodically needed. Sometimes we find ourselves struggling with an older piece of equipment or we need to tackle a new project in an area we've read about but never actually coded for. Sometimes, the older works can be more useful than many of the current crop of "churn-and-grind" manual rehashes we see today.

However, I've recently had to move into far smaller digs. While doing so, I discovered I had boxes and boxes and boxes of the stuff lying around, some of which I hadn't opened in more than ten years.

Since most of those boxes are now in a storage unit (an expensive one, I might add), I've come to the realization that, "No, I don't really need to keep all of those sources." So I've been going through and parting with things like old DOS manuals (and diskettes), four editions of Petzold, Castro's Perl book (and titles of similar quality), and so on.

I've donated what made sense (and was less than five years old) and recycled the rest.

I figure it it this way: Since there's a readily accessible body of knowledge going back more than twenty years, a way of searching for people (and their works) interested in (and using) the same things I work with, and a way of reading that which is no longer available, I really don't need to be paying to store stacks and stacks of mouldering paper.

Mind you, I am keeping a few things (perhaps one in ten), but most of it is going to be reused by someone else at this point. (After all, do I really need to keep my Turbo 3.3 manuals? I don't think so. Not at this point.)

Perhaps more succinctly: Information may be power, but only if it's useful and only if you use it. Some things are classics; keep those. Unburden yourself from those things that do not serve you. If you must, keep a few for sentimental reasons (I've had a hand in a few titles; I'm keeping those), but focus on what you're doing and using now.

The truth is that much of the worthwhile information in older formats is being retained in newer ones. And, should you discover we were overly aggressive in clearing your shelves, well, you can almost always find older titles in various places.

At the very least, you'll have plenty of room for the next crop of books you need. :-)

In closing, I'd like to remind folks that there are other ways to put unwanted books to good use. Consider, for example the VDL or other possibilities.

--f

P.S. Mind you, this only refers to my technical library. My recreational library is also getting reviewed, but far less aggressively.

¹ - Update: Fixed the Freudian (Warcraftian?) slip. Good catch, ChemBoy. Thanks.

Hmmm, anyone else remember this node? Please help your local library. Christmas is just around the corner ...

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Not that I have any objection to helping your local library (hell I used to be a librarian at high school), but there is also this alternative. release your books into the wild and track their progress :-)

---If it doesn't fit use a bigger hammer

And then there are the recently acquired 6 boxes of SF and mystery novels from the '50s, '60s and '70s. And the six shelf rack overflowing with (boxed) magazines and (computer science) articles. And there's this tower of university notes filling up the gap between the closet and the ceiling.

And only two more weeks left to pack.

But doing some of it away? Are you _mad_? I'd rather give up my computer than my books.

Abigail

Yeah, I hoard books, too.

I occasionally realize how many books I have that I will never use again (fr'instance, once I bought K&R and Expert C Programming, I'll never touch that Schildt book...), and give them to the public library, after allowing my friends first dibs. I'm doing something slightly different with my second-edition Camel: offering it to any monastery denizen willing to pay shipping (which is probably less than a new copy, which might help someone).

But yeah, giving away books that are still useful, but that you no longer need is a powerful good.

--

F o x t r o t U n i f o r m

Found a typo in this node? /msg me

When a start up hired me, they were also renting a library of hundreds of the latest computer books that I had spent all my ill gotten cyber riches upon. When armed goons told us that we had 2 hours to evacuate the building, my task was the hardest as I scrambled to load my books into milk crates. I think that some of my books are still with former coworkers that offered to hold them for me.

Now I'm mature enough to realize that what I've ever really wanted wasn't to be rich, or to control an empire, but to own my own book store. Right now it would be a small one, but full of very cool, hard to find things. I'll let you know when it opens.

()-()
 \"/
  `                                                     

I believe the correct term is "collecting" :-)

--
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is. -Margaret Mitchell

For me there are few greater simple pleasures than being utterly surrounded by books. Thus, when I was forced to move to a tiny house in the city, I had to make a great many painful decisions as to what to take down there and what to put into storage. In the old house, we had put bookcases on every wall of the large living room, including a monstrous pair eight feet tall that took up 15+ feet of one wall and had shelves exactly the right height for paperbacks. And all the shelves were full to overflowing.

So I guess you could call me a 'hoarder.' ;) My wife calls me an insane packrat, and cannot understand why I can't even part with one of my two paperback copies of The Hunt for Red October (I have the original paperback cover and the newer one from after the movie came out). She doesn't understand why I would want to hang on to a paperback copy of a book if I also have the hardcover.

Now I have very few books at my fingertips (though all my O'Reillys made the cut and look awfully pretty on the shelf over my monitor) and I don't get to just sit surrounded by millions of pages of printed words in my own home. I have started visiting the local library (where I found a copy of TheDamian's Object-Oriented Perl, yay!), but it's not the same. On the other hand, I did just drag in two of our smaller bookcases from storage and have them anchored to the wall and awating over-loading. And everyone who knows me knows I love new books...

At any rate, we'll someday be able to move to a larger place, preferably one with a large windowless room (windows cut into the wallspace needed for shelves) and I'll be able to pull all those dozens of book boxes out of storage once again.

-rattus, wandering somewhat far afield from the original topic

__________
He seemed like such a nice guy to his neighbors / Kept to himself and never bothered them with favors
- Jefferson Airplane, "Assassin"

Okay, I admit it, I'm a book junkie. When I moved in January, I had more boxes filled with books than all other boxes combined ... including computer paraphernalia. My P.G. Wodehouse collection alone filled two banker's boxes. And I am redecorating the entire downstairs so I can turn it into a library. The bookshelves alone may cost more than the downpayment on the house, but I consider it money well spent. All I need to do is hire a butler/valet named Jeeves to rally round with scotch-and-sodas and life will be complete.

The scary thing is that I can still foresee times when I'll need my Perl 4 books, and they'll have to pry my first edition of Kernighan and Ritchie's C out of my cold, dead hands. Should I seek help now, or is this normal?

--
tbone1
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

P.G. Wodehouse is worth keeping at any cost. In case you aren't aware of it the Overlook Press is reprinting all of the master's works in batchs of three or four volumes every few months. They started last year and now have eight volumes out. The books are printed on acid-free paper and are wonderful to hold, read, behold, etc. The nice folks at Overlook will put you on an e-mail list to be notified when new books come out. You have to call them about that though.

Beyond Wodehouse my "must keep" books include the O'Reilly' books, anything by TheDamian, and a few other odds and ends about C++ and C. Of course, this doesn't include my collections of military history, railroad, and sci-fi books. That list gets a lot longer.

Just my $.02,
Ron

Yes, I have seen the master's works reprinted by Overlook, though I didn't know they were reprinting all of them. That is sheer bliss; I only hope the project goes to completion, or at least through Love among the Chickens; what can I say, I'm a Ukridge fan.

Getting back to computing books, I am a member of the O'Reilly cult as well, particularly since I moved to OS X at home. I've even saved my old Fortran 77 book from college, which may be giving away my age more than I'd care to think about.

And while I think ebooks are great, there is something viscerally pleasing about the smell and feel of an old book by Mencken or Saki that adds to the reading experience. Silly, but there it is.

--
tbone1
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

Originally picked up as part of a project in which I planned to catalog web sites by DDC code, I may eventually find myself using it for the books about the house. Eventually I'd like to have fully classified, organized, and database-entry-ized every piece of media I own. (/me adds project to already lengthy "to do" list).

As to the question of what to do with old books? Depends. My gut instinct is "keep them". In boxes if necessary. Too many times I've moved or simply desired to have less clutter and gotten rid of books, magazines, audio recordings, etc. Only to regret it. Many are simply not available at the present time or their replacement costs are now skyhigh). Unless space or other expense is at a critical level, pack old books in good plastic bins and stuff them in the rafters of the garage, the attic, a corner of the basement, is my opinion.

Or, as the best possible alternative, bundle them into reasonable groups and sell them on eBay. If your books have any market value at all, someone there will probably pick them up. Don't try to guess what they're worth, start the bidding at $0.01 and then make sure to add a reasonable S/H fee. This way your books get to people who actually want them, and it's likely that if there is any latent demand for your books, that the price will get bid to an appropriate level.

Thank god I'm not alone. The wife claims there's not going to be any room for her soon.. I told her I can squeeze her in somewhere between the old gwbasic books and the Tandy 1000 reference manuals (circa 1981).

Thankfully she didn't get it.

My favorite book I have no use for is an RPG III manual. It's survived 3 moves in 15 years. I touched it 6 times, pack, unpack, pack, unpack, pack, unpack. It must have cost a fortune, I forget.

I know that DOS 6.3 manual will be useful one day...

BookFoo

This is normal behaviour isn't it? I don't even want to think about the books, programming and otherwise, that I've got hoarded. I was going through a box that was in a cabinet in our library here at the house a few weeks ago and ran across a bunch of old MS QuickBASIC programming books. With them were old Peter Norton assembly language manuals, PC BIOS books, etc. It was a wrench, but I did force myself to throw those away as they are of absolutely no use anymore; all of them pre-dated Windows 3.

I think that hanging on to books is a normal thing to do. As you mention, you might need them someday. In some ways I think that hackers (in the old meaning of the term) are much like farmers. We don't throw anything out because we never know when some little piece of information or hardware may come in useful. How many of us have used books to help level out an equipment cabinet or such-like? I have, several times.

So no. Don't worry about being thought unusual, except by those of the great unwashed.

Just my $.02,
Ron

My current stash is largely computer books. I have 12 perl books and only like 3 of them! I can't bring myself to get rid of them yet (though I prune occasionally). It seems to me that there are few things more useless than "old" computer books. Unless of course your a history buff.

I recently found myself to be a docs ogre as well. A favorite pass-time was to go to library book sales, second hand book stores, and B&N bargain shelves for early editions of any sort of language/technique manual. During a recent move, I decided it was time I renounced my packrat ways. Numerous 3-ring binders full of printed manuals ranging from superceded RFCs to Mac System 7 manuals, to early writeups on XML and the Gnutella protocol all got chucked. I won't even begin to talk about the various obsolete hardware I finally parted with.

A true test of my new, streamlined self came this past weekend when I was at yet another library book sale. There in all thier faded glory were O'Reilly's 'Essential System Administration' and 'Apache: The Definitive Guide' - both first editions. Like a smoker recently quit, I stood rationalizing with myself why these no-longer-particularly-relevant tomes should come home with me -- Just One More!

I overcame that hurdle, but I know others follow. So I say 'Nay, brother Doc Ogre! You are not alone!'