Putting Our Paper on a Diet

[jducoeur]

There -- that was a productive day.

Not wanting to deal with the heat, msmemory and I spent the core of the day working our way through the remaining boxes of books in the attic. For a number of years now, we've dealt with the excess of paper by stuffing boxes up there; now, as part of the Clean The House project, they're all getting moved to storage.

However, step 1 is repacking and winnowing. The old boxes weren't well-packed for piling high, and we've really never asked the question, "Do we really need this?" So that was the project continued today -- going through the boxes, weeding out anything that fails the question, and repacking better, into more consistently-shaped and tightly-packed boxes.

The end result is that we have (so far) about eight loosely-packed boxes of books to be given away. They cover the gamut of topics, from a nearly-complete Encyclopedia Brittanica to random humor books to religion to just plain strange. There's some good stuff there (including duplicate Shakespeares -- we just don't need that many editions of the Bard), as well as some pure crap.

The current plan is that we're going to bring these to a few upcoming activities (probably including Baronial Archery Champs), and encourage folks to rummage through them and take books away. Once we've done a couple of those, we'll find a library book sale or something to give the remainder to.

We are *not* going to deliver anything -- that has consistently been a disaster every time we've offered -- but if anyone wants the Brittanica set (from the mid-60's, IIRC), and is willing to come take it away, drop us a note and we'll arrange a time for you to come by. And if you don't expect to be at Archery Champs, but want to paw through the boxes, we might be able to set up a time...

Comments

[tpau]

any cookbooks?

[jducoeur]

No period ones, if that's what you're really asking here. One or two very basic and mundane ones, but that's about it...

[laurion]

Might be interested in pawing, as I am unlikely to be at any near future activities. No chance of a list to reduce pawing time?

[jducoeur]

No, sorry. One thing we've learned over the course of this project is that we can't get too involved in trying to find good homes here -- we have lost a *huge* amount of time trying to inventory and deliver things just so we can get rid of them. This project is much, much too large to keep going like that...

[pamelina.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, I could use a Shakespeare... mine is falling apart. Do you by any chance have an annotated one you don't want anymore?

[jducoeur]

These aren't collections, they're paperback editions of individual plays. (About eight of them, IIRC.) Some are fairly decent (several Folgers, a few Ardens, etc), but we can't justify holding on to the dupes, especially since every play tend to require us to buy that production's pet edition anyway...

[pamelina.livejournal.com]

Ah, I understand. Thanks.

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

We're having a big travel fund auction at Great Northeastern War. I'm sure books on any even vaugely period topic (like Shakespeare) would be welcome.

[galaneia.livejournal.com]

I might be interested in pawing through the discards...I'm fairly certain I'm not going to Archery Champs.