A Review of Prosser's "Affect and Deaccessioning in the Academic Library: Feelings About Books and Place"

Tallent, Diana

Prosser, D., (2020). "Affect and deaccessioning in the academic library: Feelings about books and place". Library Trends, 68(3), 506-520. doi:10.1353/lib.2020.0003.

In this study, Prosser addresses deaccessioning, more commonly known as weeding, getting at the root of why it is one of the most painful processes for librarians, library communities and bibliophiles. The topic rose to the surface as a hot button issue for her “… in the summer of 2018 during the deaccessioning of collections of books and bound periodicals from Olin Library at Rollins College, a liberal arts institution in central Florida” when a strong emotional reaction to the project became a notable source of criticism of the library. She roots through the literature on this topic and examines how affect -- which she asserts is at the heart of the relationship people develop with print books -- is reconciled with the library’s need to make room for new and updated acquisitions.

Prosser’s article intrigued me because it gets at the strong emotional bond which people have for books and which, I think it is probably safe to say, most book lovers feel, at least to some extent. I bristled a little at her assertions that, “Print Collections look backward. Electronic resources by their nature look forward” not only because those statements seem to connote that the past is inferior to the future (do we stand on the shoulders of giants or not?), but also because I simply don’t categorically agree. Like most affected bibliophile’s, I find electronic resources problematic 1) in their very lack of existence in the physical plane, 2) because they are available to the end user only at the purveyor’s whim, and 3) because they are not owned, only their use is authorized for a time, and that time frame is almost always subject to change without notice. Something so temporally and physically amorphous is not appropriately fixed to be forward looking unless embracing cancel culture is the new norm.

When Prosser states that “Deaccessioning is at the heart of library stewardship”, she is fundamentally, if painfully correct. We cannot have collection development without weeding because no library is large enough nor their budget massive enough to house everything, no matter how much we might like to try. Still, when she recounts the dumping of deaccessioned library books into “… dumpsters in the parking lot…” I couldn’t help but question why Olin Library didn’t find some other option for disposing of or attempting to rehome the materials. All the libraries I have worked for have had deaccessioning guidelines, some adopted voluntarily, and some dictated by a system or larger institution. If there were people pulling books indiscriminately out of the dumpsters, it stands to reason that there had to be a way to give many, if not all, of those items away and avoid the public (and private) outcry. She is correct in saying, “Perhaps modeling and eliciting an emotional intelligence of weeding is in order” though she might have added that this is true on both sides of the equation.