Library Books

The aim of authors is to get their stories published. Get them in Books for the world to read.

Some local authors have actually published books – one or two are in our group. And some of these are in our local library, the Grand Forks & District Public Library.

Libraries everywhere struggle to survive and stay relevant. Most smaller libraries do not have the space to hold onto a large collection – that costs more money than they have. And as libraries adapt to adjust to a changing world some of their facilities and resources go to things other than the book collection.

In smaller institutions this means hard choices have to be made – such as the collection kept to manageable size and content that is relevant and desired by the patrons. That last part necessitates the purchase of some new books as they are published. And the new books need space on the shelves so some old books will have to go . . . but which ones?

There’s a simple rule of thumb to use for the books that don’t stick out of the crowd: If no one has borrowed it in the last two years and it didn’t get much borrowing in total then it is a candidate for culling.

Unless a book by a local author is significant in some way, national award winner, movie adaptation or something along those lines – it will be subject to culling.

We’ve had discussions on how to ensure our library preserves our books – various ideas have been tossed around. Most require the library to put in extra effort to recognize when a local author shows up in the list and take action to not remove it from the collection.

There is another way to ensure these books don’t get purged: just borrow them.

It is a proactive way of dealing with the situation that does not require the library to change what they do and how they do it. The onus, and work, falls on us.

Below you can find a list of books at our local library that are by authors we’d classify as ‘local’ and we’d like to stay in the library in perpetuity.

You can help out by borrowing one or more of these books. You might even try reading them – who knows you might find something you enjoy. (if you do we’d appreciate some feedback)

UPDATE: June 2021 – The Library will be labelling all books by local authors with a spine label identifying those books so they can be more easily noticed on the shelf. To see this visit this post.