Daniel Traister has written an interesting Look At Books, specifically, preservation and collection. He says his effort is to think about a set of interrelated questions:
what libraries collect;
what libraries don\’t collect;
why libraries make the decisions about what to collect they make;
and why libraries are (and, obviously, whether they should be) so devoted to impossible ideals of universal preservation (the goal of universal acquisition having been effectively, although not intellectually, abandoned long ago).
\”I think we need realistically to come to grips with limits. I think we need to come realistically to grips with mortality. I think we may even need to admit that, counterintuitive as it may seem to \”us,\” there are not only some books that will die, but also some that should. And then start choosing.\”
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