Like many college and university libraries that are embracing the resources of the digital age, the library at my home institution, Villanova University, has been undergoing a massive process of “deselection.”[1] This term is a euphemism for getting rid of books—over a hundred thousand books—to make room for new books, for more student study space, and for an aesthetically pleasing glass atrium free of unsightly book clutter. Where will the books go? faculty ask. They will be donated, the library website assures us—that is, unless nobody wants them. The statement on the fate of the unwanted inauspiciously ends there.
The process of culling library books in one’s field—of “deselecting” the old and unpopular, the redundant, the unfashionable, the also-ran—raises...
