Laura Marshall: Library and Information Association Executive Director on the National Library culling thousands of books

News the Government's set to shred half a million books from the National Library is being described as standard management. 

Books including religious texts, Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf are among them, with the cull expected to save about a million dollars in storage costs.  

Library and Information Association Executive Director Laura Marshall told Andrew Dickens books are destroyed to make room as part of collection management. 

She says it's specific to the particular library or institute, and if they kept every book published, they'd need a 50 storey building. 

Around 50 thousand books were offered to other libraries, Marshall says, and another 50 thousand to charities, adding at some point a book's time is up. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Multiple major religious texts will be shredded at the National Library.
A number of books which include the Quran, the Bible
and the Turrah will be destroyed and then recycled and
this is to save one million dollars a year in
storage costs. Laura Marshall is the executive director of the
Library and Information Association of New Zealand and joints it
now Good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Laura, Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
There's a few religious people around the place are a
bit freaked out by this.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
It's standard religious policy at standard religious policy. Sorry, it's
through early in the morning. It's standard collection policy. There'll
be a policy on what's removed from collections. I don't
know the policy of this particular place, but yeah, people
just need to look into what is the collection policy,
and it's a fairly standard collection management. All of these

(00:49):
books are available at your local library and if people
do want to read them, they can become members of
their local library and they are available to read.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So libraries always do culls because there's always used books
and they end up full. So how do libraries decide
which books to stay in which to go.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
It's very specific to the particular institute or the particular library.
I used to be the library director of ODDA and
we had a collection management policy. If it was one
of those best sellers, when people stopped lending it, we
used to call the box and get rid of them.
If we kept every book that was published, we'd need
a fifty story building, which is obviously not possible at all. However,

(01:28):
in our heritage collection, same as the National Library, we
kept books of significance. We keep multi collections, we keep
local history collections. So it comes down to what is
significant for that community, for that institute, and what's its
mandate by usually as governing body, on what it should collect.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Spreading seems a little bit violent, doesn't it. I mean
that book has gone. Is that standard? Why don't we
have a very big garret sale?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
It is standard because you get to the point where
nobody wants the books. I used to be a second
hand bookseller for fifteen years and I I have tredded
so many books. It gets to a point where nobody
wants to read it. It's times up and we need
room for new books. Like I said, you need a
fifty story building to put these to put these books in.
So many times people would bring me the collections of

(02:14):
their grandmar and say, oh, I don't want to throw
these out, so I'm going to give these to you,
and I'll be like, no, you have to throw them out.
Why should I do it? It comes a point where
books are not going to be read, and this is
just great collection policy. All of these books are available
somewhere else as well.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
And some of these books haven't been checked out in
twenty or thirty years. Should they have even been bought
in the first place.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yes, you do have to test the market, and you
must remember some of these books are very old. So yeah,
testing the market is part of good collection policy, and
they're making a sound decision. As another I believe with
this particular collection, at least fifty thousand of the books
were offered to other libraries and were taken up. So
some of these have gone to other library collections. I
believe another fifty thousand weeks charity. And I can tell you,

(02:57):
as an experienced bookseller who used to make money out
of books, a lot of these books their time is up, unfortunately,
and it's sad, but this is what we do to
bring in new books. I think it is something like
a million to two million books. Are published every year.
Got to have room for these new collections. But be
sured libraries do keep those heritage books, those out of print,
those rare books, those books that are really special to

(03:20):
a particular community. This is their skill and this is
what they're great.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
He yes, stuff, Laura, I thank you so very very much.
I don't need to take the Bible out from the
library because I've got my family Bible, which came out
on a boat and arrived in New Zealand in eighteen
forty three. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
listen live to news Talks.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
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