The Baronial Library.

.....So, I'm torn. A week or so ago a proposal was brought to me as the Baronial Seneschal. The Librarian was speaking about how little traffic the Library actually receives, even though they've been promoting it rather extensively. It is their thought that with the prevalence of information electronically that actual, for real, books are just not desired as much these days. It was their contention that this was especially true in the Baronial Library since there are a lot of books there of a fantasy, definitely NON SCA, nature.

.....It was their thought that the Barony should consider dropping the Library all together. Or, at the very least, go through the library and get rid of the books that do not fit in an SCA setting. Namely the fantasy and Science Fiction stuff. As well as the really BAD information books.

.....Now, to me, books are rather sacred in a sense. I love information. I love knowledge. I love the written word, even if done badly. So the thought of throwing away a book is just an an act of sacrilege to me. But, if the book is never going to be used in its current location, maybe it would be a good idea to remove it from our library and donate it to a venue where someone else might find some value in holding it and reading it.

.....Another part to this I suppose is the amount of time, love and energy I myself have in the Baronial Library. I first became involved in it when Inga Calle ran the library back in the late '90's. She was intense in her desire to acquire new additions to the library. She was incredibly active in promoting what she had located there and she was always shuttling books to people wherever she went. If you look at the check-out log from that period, you see people actively checking out material all the time.

.....When I took over the library and moved it into my house, I promoted the library. But I was not nearly as intense about it as Inga was. I certainly did not continue her relentless drive to increase the number of items in the library. And the results were visible. The number of people who visited the library dropped off considerably. By the time I turned the library over to Talon a year or so ago I had maybe a visitor every other month or so.

.....So, after a little discussion this evening, the plan is to form a small committee to go through the books we have in the Library and come to a decision as to whether it even belongs in the Baronial Library or not. If it doesn't for some reason, it'll go into a stack that is donated. sold and otherwise removed from the Library.

.....Beyond the fact that I hate giving up books in general, I think back to earlier days of Gold Key purging. Dragon's Laire used to have a rather nice Gold Key collection back in the early '90's. But there was a time when it was decided that our Gold Key was too large and a number of items were sold off. A number of really NICE items, like a couple of Elizabethan pieces that were well constructed out of some high end fabric. When I look at the relative junk we currently have in Gold Key, I become a little ill thinking of the nice stuff we USED to have. When we give up books in the Library, we may thin the library down to material we think is a better fit. But anything we give up is GONE and isn't coming back. Definitely a not of finality, hence my reluctance.

.....It'll be interesting to see where this ends. As I said earlier, I can see arguments for both sides on this one.

.....Aaron / Arontius.