For those of you who have been into the Bindoon Library, you’ll know that we’re actually quite small. As much as it feels bigger on the inside due to the thousands of worlds that sit upon the shelves, the library is unfortunately not a TARDIS. We are limited to the space between our four walls and although we’ve worked hard over the past couple of years to maximise the space, there are only so many books that we can fit inside.
So how do we go about ensuring that we have enough new stock to keep our members happy whilst at the same time keeping our OSH reps happy by not having books piled high in the aisles as they overflow the shelves?
The State Library of WA sends us stock once a month as part of our exchange. Bindoon is what’s called a ‘non-selecting’ library which means that we don’t get to choose what stock is sent to us; we just receive several treasure chests filled with approximately 120 items a month. Roughly 80 of these are brand new and the rest is made up of stock that has been returned from other libraries. We have a profile that we update so we can let the officers at SLWA know what sort of items are preferred but it does mean that we don’t get to request specific items.
As part of this exchange, we then have the opportunity to send back any items that we no longer want. These will include items that haven’t been borrowed in several years, or items that have doubled up, or just items that don’t suit our demographic. This frees up space on the shelves for new stock and keeps it rotating so our readers don’t get bored.
We’re also lucky in that we receive donations from the community which we add as local stock. The majority of the latest releases that we have are donations from people who bought it, read it, and then have passed it on. Without these, our collection would not be anywhere as broad as it is so we’re extremely lucky to receive these.
Unfortunately we can’t keep every single book that’s donated to us as we do have limited space and so we have to make a judgement call on what is likely to be borrowed and what’s not. We do our best to keep our stock rotating and fresh, and it might be patting our own backs, but I think we do a pretty awesome job of it.
