Advertisement Thousands of UNH library books found in dumpster Professors at odds with library over discarded books Share Shares Copy Link Copy

A dumpster on the campus of the University of New Hampshire is filling up with books from Dimond Library, and professors want to know why.Click here to view News 9’s report.Librarians said they need to make room for new science books, but one art history professor said they are throwing out volumes worth keeping.A 20-yard bin that sits behind the library is filling up with books.“I’m absolutely appalled,” said Patricia Emison, an art history professor. “I don’t know what’s going on. I was never consulted. It seems to me a travesty.”Emison said valuable art history books are being thrown away.“I don’t know what they think they’re doing,” she said. “I mean, you need those books to have a sense of the history of your discipline, even if they’re not the latest thing off the press.”The library is recycling 36,000 books and putting another 15,000 in storage. The total is about 3 percent of Dimond's collection, and is on the move to make room for bio-science books, administrators said.The volumes in the dumpster haven’t been checked out in at least 20 years, administrators said.“Our circulation data goes back to 1994, so it’s possible that it’s been longer than that that they haven’t been used,” said Jennifer Carroll, the UNH Collection Management librarian.“We had a lot of materials dealing with automation and computers from the 1980s,” Carroll said. “Things have changed a lot since then.”The books cover many subjects, and students running a charity book drive said they are wondering why they can’t have some of what’s in the dumpster.“I wish the UNH community would have reached out to us about this so we could have put these books to good use somewhere,” said Sean Moreau, a senior.Librarians said giving away out-of-date books is inappropriate. Some contend that’s also why they are worth keeping.“One needs even the bad books to survive so you can see what people used to think,” Emison said.“Ideally, we would like to keep everything forever, and every book has some value in it, but we have to prioritize,” Carroll said.Emison and others said they are also troubled because they were not made aware of the weeding process ahead of time.Librarians said they were forced to work under a short timetable.