Librarians' folly?

I have been reading Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich... and Poor Countries Stay Poor, which is a lot of fun because it covers ground that economists have long forgotten (even though I do have questions about Reinert's understanding of contemporary economics). One of the snippets in the book is that the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School discarded in 1984 all of the books that had not been checked out in the last fifty years (including most of its collection of Friedrich List). Reinert says that he subsequently bought some of these books from book dealers.

I find this to be outrageous, and almost hard to believe. The typical deep research (i.e. a Google search) has not turned up any more information about this infamous event in the history of librarianship. I suppose I could walk over and ask myself, but I wonder if anyone out there has any knowledge of it.

Baker library holds a special place in my heart as I spent a god bit of my undergraduate years in its bowels. After two years of working in the dining halls and washing dishes, I made a professional leap in my junior year to a research assistantship with the incomparable Raymond Vernon (of the international product cycle fame.) Ray Vernon would eventually turn out to become a mentor and strong supporter, but at the time he presented a terrifying figure to a shy undergraduate. I would ensconce myself in Baker for hours for fear of failing to come up with good results. I still remember vividly the very first two tasks he set me on: to come up with minimum efficient scale figures for the auto industry and with evidence that long-term contracts fare poorly in international trade.  What would now take about ten minutes sitting in front of a PC took me days and days of walking the stacks at Baker.

And I remember the librarians at Baker as nice and wise folks who would not have made such a blunder...     

Comments

[M. Gemmill]

Definitely an eyebrow raising claim. Widener books that don't circulate sufficiently are "retired" to the book depository. Library staff used to mark them with little dot stickers (I forget what color). One of my friends used to remove the stickers whenever he spotted one in the stacks. I personally have checked out books that hadn't circulated in over 50 years from Widener (doing research for a history prof). But that doesn't tell you what the policies at Baker are.

A HOLLIS search suggests, though, that this claim is dubious: for example, Baker Library seems to be in possession of numerous List works in their 1840s editions.

[philosophking]

Perhaps it is not correct, but how alien is the idea? How many of the papers published in the top journals of economics ever cite anything even 10 years ago? Are 'old' economic ideas really that bad, or has the profession simply adopted a view that nothing that old is worthwhile to them?

And what does this say for economics as a social science?

[hari]

Dani -

This is a serious issue - not only because of your own story - also mine!

In theory, I don't have much against Librarians. But this story tells a very different perspective on economics, as a subject.

Remember your log on opposing schools of economic -thinking and writing today!

Well it could easily be true that libertarian economics is taking over even Libraries - otherwise why discard valuable books?

[hari]

Dani -

This is a serious issue - not only because of your own story - also mine!

In theory, I don't have much against Librarians. But this story tells a very different perspective on economics, as a subject.

Remember your log on opposing schools of economic -thinking and writing today!

Well it could easily be true that libertarian economics is taking over even Libraries - otherwise why discard valuable books?

[Damien Eldridge]

If a library at which I had borrowing privelages was to announce such a policy at a time when I was not too busy, I suspecty I might make a point of borrowing a whole heap of books and then returning them straight away, just to avoid them being lost to future scholars for another fifty or so years at least.

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[Flybrand]

Dr. Rodrik - I recently came upon your books *after* I started reading List. (I was an undergrad econ major and was surprised we never read it.) Your post here shows respect for List, have you written elsewhere about your views on him?