With a steady stream of items flowing in and out of Alden Library, its collection quickly increased from 500,000 books when it opened in February 1969 to more than 1.4 million volumes in 1985.
Currently, Alden’s collection consists of about 5.3 million items, including almost 2.96 million books, according to a 2008–09 statistical overview. The number of books had increased to about 2.98 million by June 2010, said Jan Maxwell, assistant dean of collections and access.
“The other items are at best a good estimate,” Maxwell said. “There are so many little bits and pieces, most of us — all of us — don’t have the staff to go back and count every single piece. There are a lot of people who think we should just stop counting.”
The number of books in the library continues to increase steadily, but it does not necessarily translate to a heavier load for the 50 miles of shelving in the library, Maxwell said.
“One of the things I will point out is that the 2.9 million are not all physical print — about 700,000 are electronic collections,” Maxwell said.
Acquiring new books is a careful system — academic departments have library representatives who make suggestions about which books to buy, and Alden’s subject librarians also study what is being published to keep the collection ahead of the curve, she said.
Many private parties also donate to the library, but those donations can be sold to net profit. The library doesn’t keep track of how many books are donated, Maxwell said.
“Any time we accept a donation of books we reserve the right to dispose of them as we please,” Maxwell said. “Some donations … just don’t fit our curriculum here or just aren’t research materials.”
Many of the books sold at Alden’s quarterly sales were donations to the library. The sales net the library tens of thousands of dollars each year, said Scott Seaman, dean of the Ohio Universities Libraries.
“Often, the books are duplicates of what we already have, or they are accessible through OhioLINK, so there is no need for them,” he said.
Books donated to the library are checked to see if they are appropriate for the collections. If books aren’t kept by the library, they are sold through Friends of the Libraries of Ohio University, an organization supporting various activities for OU’s libraries.
“We maintain an association of people interested in the library and books,” said Beth VanDerveer, a member and former president of the organization. “Through the money, we actually make a significant gift to the library depending on what the need is.”
During the past 30 years, Friends of the Library has fundraised more than $300,000 for Alden. Of this, it can raise as much as $5,000 to $6,000 per quarter through book sales, Seaman said.
The money taken from book sales is put toward art, furniture, scholarships, and other items and programs, he said.
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