Disposition of books in our FamilySearch Center

donnajoearlcolyar1

We are new-ish coordinators of a regional (serves at least five stakes) FamilySearch Center with a renovation underway. Our Center has languished for decades and now has a collection of several hundred reference books and family histories. We have a set of 3 pretty, tall bookcases to house them, but I'd like to cull the collection to a manageable inventory and only keep the most useful reference books. Do I need to do an updated inventory (the last one was 20 years ago) and account to FamilySearch for what I keep, or can I make the determination about what we keep? Any ideas about where all these huge books of individual family surname histories could go? I think most of them already reside in the Salt Lake Library. It's an exhausting task.

Pamela Nunokawa

I had a similar situation. I let our FSC staff take whatever books they wanted, and there were many. Then I sent a list of the remaining books to books@familysearch.org. They responded within about two weeks as to which books they wanted (only 3 of them). So then I emailed the list to affiliate libraries in my area. It's been a month and I haven't heard back from them. One of the libraries in a neighboring town does a used book sale every year to raise funds. I may need to donate them there if no one else takes them. It very sad.

Chris Schmink

We just went through that with a very large collection of books. We let the wards know that we were getting rid of the books and people were free to come in and take what they found useful/valuable to them. We no longer have any books in our center. We also invited two libraries to come take their picks. One showed up and took some of them for their collection in a less populated county north of us, but the other did not respond (ironically, that was the one with a huge genealogical collection and room devoted to the subject). Very few members took advantage of the opportunity.

In actuality, I don't think I've ever seen anyone perusing the bookshelves, let alone taking anything down off the shelves to read or study. They come to use the computers without the distractions of home, or else to find information they cannot get outside of a FSC. Most of the titles we had are now available somewhere online, or in another library, as you say is the case with the Salt Lake Library.

Sadly, we finally had to dispose of a large number of the books after trying to assure ourselves that there was nothing in the collection that wasn't available elsewhere, or that we had some one-of-a-kind references (we did not). It was a tough process and decision, but we just were out of choices in most cases.

—Chris

Jaelene Starr

How did you dispose of the books? Just curious. Do we take them to the dump?

donnajoearlcolyar1

We’re going to take anything in a binder to the recycle at the dump. Try to donate the other books or take to DI. It’s going to be a process. I’m starting with the self-published family histories and then weeding through the reference books with a firm resolve.

donnajoearlcolyar1

i have culled our collection to about half its size, about 200 books, maybe less. We disposed of ones in bad shape and flimsy paper stuff, and thankfully, the local genealogical society is taking the rest, some to keep and some to sell, as they are for profit and have subscriber members. I’m relieved to find a home for them. I hope our remaining books might be used more if they’re well labeled and organized by topic, area of the world, etc. instead of jammed on the bookshelves. It’s an ongoing, hard task that hurts my heart a little.