This afternoon will be spent preparing the office for next weeks move into the city. Anyone who has ever come by to visit my office could not help but notice the Airbag Published Materials Collection that started more than fifteen years ago. From time-to-time I have weeded the library of titles that either ended up being completely useless or I had somehow gained a duplicate copy. Samples from the collection include DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web by Jason Cranford Teague, Hot Wired Style by Jeffrey Veen, and Lynda Weinman's web designer staple Designing with Web Graphics.2 (I gave away the first one to a college who wanted to learn how to become a designer).
Years ago I had a discussion with a person who had a lot of passion for libraries and collections. She was very happy to know that I was hanging on to such tomes in hopes that one day it would be handed over to someone as a matter of keeping all of it for historical record. And so I have continued to provide care for these books in effort to help preserve them as close to the condition as they were when I bought them.
Books like those written by Weinman and Veen are definitely keepers because they were more than a vocational how-to and provided invaluable information and insight on how to be creative despite the constraints of the web at the time. It is these volumes which I believe will be valuable--not in the monetary way mind you--to future generations of researchers and hobbyist who are curious about the different phases in the our creative evolution. Those books get to stay and will be cared for until it is time to hand them off to a library or collection somewhere.
I'm not so certain that I should continue to provide care for books that provide how-to information for things like DHTML, Flash MX, or old versions, think very old, of Photoshop. I have brought them along with the assumption that they might have the same curiosity value as an old Chilton's manual from decades ago but now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's time to thin the heard and recycle these things into something more useful.
When I consulted the Rocket Scientist on his matter she made the Are You Kidding Me?™ face, waved her hand, and with a "Pfffft" to dismiss me and my First World quandary away. Perhaps deservingly so, but if you share the same passion for the web that I have then hopefully you'll understand and provide more than one syllable suggestion.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Consider donating them to a local library. While the information might be outdated for you, an older book on Photoshop might be something someone else could use. (Example: Someone's kid wants to learn Photoshop and has an older copy he got from a relative. An older tome will be of use to him. Potentially.)
Other than that, I've got nothing.
I actually don't think a library is a good option. Standard practice for libraries is if they feel they don't have a use for a book (such as something very outdated) then they throw the book out. They don't even give it away or recycle it. My librarian friend is the source for a lot of my book collection because she saves the unwanted books from the trash for me.
I'd try craigslist to see if anyone wants them for free. There are a lot of geeks out there who love collecting stuff like that. If that fails then perhaps try finding a used bookstore and seeing if they have any ideas about that sort of thing.
Odd. Our local library accepts contributions and sells whatever they can't or won't put on their shelves. With regards to technical tomes, that deal with our field I find that libraries are usually pretty lacking... At least, that's the case where I live.
Craigslist is a good idea, or even Freecycle - http://www.freecycle.org/. Surely there would be someone out there who would benefit from older, irrelevant (to you) books.
In 1995 I was in college and working 2 jobs.
One of those jobs was laying out the daily college newspaper using Quark 3. We would lay the paper out and actually printed it out and pasted ads and what-not and take photographs of each page and send them to the printer. A year later we went all digital because our printer finally got Quark 3.3. We bought a scanner for $2,500. What a great time to learn graphic design.
The other job was working at Borders Bookstore. I remember we got an early promo of Lynda Weinman's designing web graphics (Yes, all lowercase) and I took that book and spent the winter break devouring that book. When I got back to college I found out the Science Dept had a server, but to use it, you had to be a Science student. I enrolled in a Psych class and got my counsellor to switch my major, only so I could use the free server to make websites. I transferred my indie rock zine to a website I made learning from Weinman's dwg called "Stingthebee" named after a line from a Theodore Roethke poem, "All the Earth, All the Air."
The truly beautiful,
Their bodies cannot lie;
The blossom stings the bee.
The ground needs the abyss,
Say the stones, say the fish.
I still have my ragged, taped and broken spined copy of designing web graphics" on my bookshelf out of respect.
> I'd try craigslist to see if anyone wants them for free. There are a lot of geeks out there who love collecting stuff like that.
That's a great idea.
> Odd. Our local library accepts contributions and sells whatever they can't or won't put on their shelves.
I've had hit and miss with what kind of technical books libraries will accept, even if they intend to sell it. Consider that the books I used as a example are selling for a single cent on Amazon. There's not much money in these books and as I have been told in the past, it's not worth a libraries effort.
> Surely there would be someone out there who would benefit from older, irrelevant (to you) books.
You would think so but given how much is published online these days it doesn't seem to be the case.
@Jim: Your comment has inspired another post for later. Great story.
Remembering our history, how we got to where we are today, is invaluable. Whatever you do, please make sure that look back is preserved.