Trash

Today I spent my practicum hours alone in the Undergraduate Library, sorting through the gifts to the education collection. I got one professor's gifts sorted through, and kept less than 30% of it. The rest will either be sold in the book sale, or it will be thrown out. Unlike most librarians (and a lot of readers), I have no problem throwing books away. While I would prefer to find some other home for them, on more than one occasion I have thrown out say, WordPerfect textbooks. Because who's going to want it? I've thrown out books that were damaged, last summer I gave almost 1/6th of my collection to the local public library for their book sale. It gets to the point that you accumulate books like dust, and you don't think to get rid of them, even after they've covered every available flat surface. You can't be sentimental about it; was I ever going to read Hobomok? Or Kate Chopin? Infinite Jest? Not if I could at all help it. And the books I found among the gifts were old textbooks with the covers falling off, WSU student handbooks from 2000, even the instruction manual for a Texas Instruments calculator. Sure, maybe somebody, somewhere has some research project that could benefit from the instructions to a calculator, but they weren't standing next to me saying, Keep that Keep that! So it's garbage*. No fuss, no muss.

Unfortunately, my hands now feel coated in dirt, and no amount of soap and water is helping with that.

*I would actually prefer if they were recycled, myself; no need for non-hazardous organic material to take up room in the local landfills.