Friday, December 23, 2005

68 Sacred Clowns

Not really. But the Bookstop has a copy of Tony Hillerman's Sacred Clowns that has circulated 68 times and is sitting happily on the shelf ready to go again. We don't mean all the copies of this book at the Bookstop total up 68 circulations; no, this one physical object has held together through 68 adventures in people's homes. Not all books are this tough; many wear out, and we have to discard them. But we ran a search for items which have circulated 75 times or more, and we have about 1200 of these immortal-seeming objects.
       Always we are thinking about when we move the Bookstop branch's collection to the new Southside Library. Here in hand is a nearly-brand-new donated copy of Sacred Clowns. The Bookstop's existing copies will move to the new library, but shall we also add this one to the Southside library's Opening Day Collection which is growing in boxes in a corner of the basement (and in our vendor's warehouse)? Yes, I think so.
       Southside's items are starting to appear in the catalog, nearing a thousand already, and only 84,000 more to go :-} They look like this:
image of catalog entry
Keep those crisp donated books coming; we're making good use of them.

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