National Library to dispose of 500,000 books from overseas collection

The National Library is set to dispose of half a million books from its foreign books collection to make room for more items about New Zealand.

The initial decision - made over six years ago - was met with public backlash. While a fraction of the books were saved, the rest will be pulped from today.

“There are compelling reasons to remove them,” National Library’s Mark Crookston told Breakfast.

“It’s a decision not taking lightly, they come from a lending collection, which is no longer being lent.

“Only 1% of the items were being lent in the years leading up to the decision in 2018. Over 80% have not been lent for 20 years.”

But author Harry Ricketts, who’s been fighting against the cull, says he’s “miffed” at the decision.

“It’s partly a generational thing, someone like me comes from a generation in which [believes] - like the character in Ian Forster’s Howards End – ‘books’, said Margaret, ‘move by the holy word’.

“The physical object of a book is particularly important.

“The idea that somehow only ‘our’ books – what are ‘our’ books? – should be preserved – seems a rather dodgy criteria.”

Crookston said it was just “good collection management” to not retain lending collection items much longer than they are required to be lent.

“This is just basic library practice that we learn in library school collection management 101.”

“They’re just taking up space and taking up resources that can be better utilised for collections that are wanted.”

The books are currently being stored in number of locations in Wellington and Whanganui.

Crookston estimated the volume of items would take up “the square metreage of approximately a third of a rugby field.”

In December 2018, the then Minister of Internal Affairs approved the National Library's request to remove the items under the National Library of New Zealand Act.

An agreement was then made with the Internet Archive to export the remaining items to their offshore digitisation base, to provide online access as well as retain physical copies.

However, Crookston said the library has now withdrawn from this agreement.

"Responding to subsequent concerns about copyright issues, the National Library paused this project and now have withdrawn from this agreement."

The remaining disposal options included transfer, sale, donation and destruction.

“While 15,000 collection titles have been transferred to other libraries, the experience with donating approximately 50,000 titles to book fairs in 2020 resulted in a modest pick-up from the public which reinforced the purpose of disposal in the first place.”

The National Library said from 2017 to 2020, less than 1% of the items involved were borrowed.

"Most of the titles have not been issued for the last 20 to 30 years," it said.