Reference Discards HD 2721 I57 vol. 1 - 138 - E 185.96 W52 1998/99

I began this post on July 1 but was not able to finish and post it until today.

I readied the equivalent of three weeks worth of discards today because I am going to be on vacation for two weeks starting tomorrow at 5:01 pm :) The carts started off quite boring, with all 138 volumes of the International Directory of Company Histories. I apparently made the day of the Head of Cataloging and Metadata by bringing these to her! I was reticent at first, but then I discovered the series is covered in our subscription to Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL), and judging from the dust on the books, no one is using this behemoth print series.

Bye bye, International Directory of Company Histories!

As I moved into the Gs (atlases!) and Fs (San Francisco history!) I had quite a good time looking over the discards. The Dictionary of Imaginary Places is fun because it shows just how whimsical the Gs can get. I was particularly enthralled with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle quote at the beginning. Not only does the quote seem to capture the nature of the book it introduces, it seems to capture a little bit of a reference librarian's guiding light.

The Karain Continent yes, but also a pink flag with some bad UV fading!

The Penguin Dictionary of Geography is fun as well, and I think would be rich with terms that could serve as writing prompts. I know that all these are outdated and that is part of why we are discarding them, but they are like time capsules to me and I lingered over them.

These little World Bank pocket atlases combine all the oppression of the World Bank's economics with a tidy atlas package! Political views aside, I do admire the economy of their physical being... little books are just so cute.

And in this post's installment of historic reference books whose entire existence seems outdated is this gem, Direct-Line Distances: United States Edition. So that's how we quantify as the crow flies.... got it.

Here's some other views of the carts' sides.

Last but certainly not lease, I encountered this pobrecita who never even got the chance to get mended... I would have like to given it a new hinge. No matter how sad, it's sort of cool to see the insides of a book's binding, to see how its spine was covered, how its text block was attached to its case, what kind of paper was used...