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Old books put library in a bind It seems like every day or two, I see someone throwing away carts full of books into a locked Dumpster at the Jackson County library office on Hazel Street. I pulled the lid up a little way and there's 30 or 40 books in there now. Good books. I saw one on travel in Hawaii. It seems like someone, somewhere could use them, or at least sell them. Why is the county wasting our tax dollars? -- Gary F., Medford Library Director Ronnie Budge says it hurts her almost as much as it hurts you to see those books discarded like so much junk. But that's what they are -- junk. In the year ending in June 1999, the library received 32,000 new items and discarded 22,000 old items. Ninety-five percent of those discarded books were given to the Friends of the Library, which sells them at book sales to fund library support services. But about 5 percent of the discarded books are damaged beyond repair or contain obsolete information -- often medical or legal information that could be dangerous to the reader. And no one will pick up old encyclopedias -- even from a free table, she said. Those are thrown away. "We've all been taught that anything in print has intrinsic value," Budge said. "But it's not true. It's only as valuable as the information inside of the cover." She said for a while the library gave the old books to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but those organizations ended up spending money hauling them to the dump. So, based on strict guidelines, the staff at the library's processing center on Hazel Street weeds out the unusable selections and trashes them. "No one wants travel information for Hawaii that's 10 years old," Budge said. "What's the point and obsolete medical information -- no one should read that. It's just clutter and someone has to throw it away." (Send your questions to "Since You Asked," Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; or by fax to (541) 776-4376; or by e-mail to: [email protected] Please include your name, address and phone number for verification.) Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA