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Ask Slashdot: Prioritizing Saleable Used Computer Books?
g01d4 writes "I volunteer at a used bookstore that supports the local library. One of my tasks is to sort book donations. For > 5-year-old computer books the choices typically are to save it for sale (fifty cents soft cover, one dollar hardback), pack it, e.g. for another library's bookstore, put it on the free cart, or toss it in the recycle bin. I occasionally dumpster dive the recycle bin to 'rescue' books that I don't think should be pulped. Recently I found a copy of PostgresSQL Essential Reference (2002) and Programming Perl (1996). Would you have left them to RIP? Obviously we have very limited space, 20 shelf feet (storage + sale) for STEM. What criteria would you use when sorting these types of books?"
Keep anything you think might sell. Track by acquisition date. If it's not gone in X months, throw it on the free cart. Another month, toss it.
"X" depends on your turnover, space, and how many books are coming in. Since you're space limited, get rid of the oldest ones first.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'd say the reference book has likely become outdated and current info is easily found on the internet.
But books like the Perl Camel book - much more than merely a reference - those are valuable for long after their topic is upgraded.
My 2 cents. Good luck...
Save anything that is foundational or fundamental to any particular field. Any book that continues to be cited academically or has increased in value on the used market should probably be kept.
My local public library system foolishly trashed some true classics in algorithms, graphics, and fractals simply because they were old. Now all you find in the stacks are books focused on instruction for specific software applications, books which are certain to be obsolete in a few years.
+0 Meh
We worked really hard in the 70s on so you wouldn't need books. Everything I did was documented with roff/runoff. This begat, in a roundabout way SCRIBE which begat SGML which begat HTML.
I've programmed C since 1974 and still do, daily. I've bought K&R, twice (and have touched a mimeographed copy dmr made pencil notes in belonging to Jim Fleming) and the O'Reily MySql book to get a fucking update statement right in 1997. Fifty bucks for one page. Other than that I just haven't found a need for them. And I've done pretty much everything.
In the post-Internet era what is it exactly you can't learn about computers without a book. I don't even want to hear it's "easier". I'm used to not doing it and fins it much less efficient, especially for this kind of stuff where I'm one click away from a local file as opposed to go find the book, find the page...
Read K&R, Read Knuth. The rest you can easily live without.
(Skip the TeX stuff though, he went insane at some point)
Need Mercedes parts ?
I have some computer science / theory books that are twenty years old and still quite valuable. Those include Cod on relational database design theory. My Visual Basic 6 books are trash because they cover a specific, outdated version of the software.
Thinking about it further, not only are the good old books theory oriented, the ones that come to mind on authored by the originators of the topic - Cod & Date, K&R, etc. The thoughts of the founding fathers of a discipline are always relevant.
What part of volunteer didn't you understand?
The APPLE II BASIC programming manual by Jef Raskin currently goes for $52 and up on Amazon. A few years ago I found a late-'90s book on embedded systems programming that turned out to be in demand and later sold for about $100 on Amazon. So look up anything unusual, specific, or that might have nostalgia value there or on Bookfinder.com before you recycle them or sell them for a buck or two.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot