Reference Discards in the As

The return of the traditional printed Reference work!

- Did you know that in 1989, Belgium used 361,014 terajoules of natural gas?
- Did you know that 25 x 25 is 625?
- Did you know that Nicholas Cage's birth name is Nicholas Coppola and he was born in Long Beach, CA?
- Did you know that the 1983 winner of the Greyhound Derby was a dog called I'm Slippy?
- Did you know that on 17 Dec 1989, Brazil elected its first president in nearly 30 years, Fernando Collor de Mello?

All these random facts are brought to you by the 1997 edition of The Cambridge Factfinder, a perfect example of a previously extremely useful printed Reference work. We have the internet now, so these are falling out of use. And this particular one is on the Reference Discard Cart -- which is probably the second or third to last cart until the project is done (I discovered today there are many volumes of the NYT index we have to get rid of... this week I tackled the 22 volumes of the NYT personal name index).

We got rid of printed museum directories and subscribed to The Official Museum Directory online (I hope people find it to use it... some of this stuff kept under lock and key languishes since a Google search is easier (but not as comprehensive)).  

Also on this cart are two Book of Lists, which I remember fooling around with back when I did the evaluation and mending project on the Reference collection. A nice fat encyclopedia, and every school child's quintessential  World Book encyclopedia, those familiar blue covers and orange stripes. I know you have a story of discovering something in one of these when you were a kid... share it!

Lastly... I am totally biased when I say these 31 volumes of An Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities should have gone years ago... book reviews... printed indices of book reviews... so 20th century.

I wish to pause now and offer two sides of reflection that keeping this blog has allowed me. One, that we have done a good weeding that may have helped keep our united Reference collection relevant, and it is too bad that the weeding was only prompted by the directive to empty the room--I feel regret over this although it is totally out of my control. Two, I feel much less sad than I anticipated. By keeping this blog, I have worked out my regret, and I offer each entry as a memorial tribute to Reference as a discipline within library science, as well as a memorial tribute to each printed Reference work that has put itself in our service for so many years.

Here's our week in Reference discards!