Library is getting rid of books to make room for people

CTV Calgary: Library purging old books Why Calgary libraries are getting rid of books. Kevin Green finds out why, and what will happen to the purged books.

The Calgary Public Library is downsizing.  It wants to get rid of about ten per cent of its books.

That is because there are big changes happening in the Calgary Library system.

As of January, 2015 the public library will eliminate fees for library cards and it expects that will double its user base.

Bill Ptacek, the CEO of the Calgary Public Library said “we are going to go from over four hundred to over 8 hundred thousand people and when those people start coming into the library…we have to make room for them and we want them to have a really positive experience. So first step in that is to pare the collection down and get it to the things that are the most useful.”

In order to fit all those extra people into the existing libraries the plan is to remove old, worn, or under-used books.

By January the library hopes to have culled about three hundred thousand books.

Books which are still in usable condition will not be destroyed.

Some will go into storage, others will be sold online and all the proceeds will go to the Calgary Public Library Foundation.

Once the books are catalogued they will be available on the website betterworldbooks.com.