where go the tomes

Great article from the Saturday Guardian about the new storage facilities being built by the big copyright libraries for all the stuff which is seldom requested - and how digitisation isnt the solution.

We remove a box, designed to repel acid (paperback books need to be kept this way if their shelf life is to consist of more than a few years). Inside, we find not only a marvellous new book about the Port of Ayr, but also a book called Momentum In Football, featuring a foreword by Sven-Göran Eriksson. Wouldn't it be great if you could just sell this stuff on eBay or recycle it sensibly? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could digitise such books and pulp the hard copy? Think of all the shelf space you'd save.

"Trust me, it isn't as simple as that," Peter Fox [librarian of Cambridge University Library] replies. [link]