Booksellers, was Bulb and Seed Exchange

Jim McKenney via pbs pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 13:37:01 PDT
 The future of books and independent book sellers has been on my mind a lot lately., mostly because of a shocking event in the recent past. I've been lucky enough to have built a fine personal library of garden books. Highlights include several well known titles from the time of Elizabeth and Shakespeare, all seventeen volumes of the pre- WWI Present Day Gardening Series. a just-about-full complete run of the Carl Foerster- Camillo Schneider Gartenschoenheit, 1920-1944 (lacking  a few sheets from the last years published during WWII), most of the Lily Yearbooks of the Royal Horticultural Society, first edition Jekylls, and hundreds of other titles important in their day. I'll be eighty in a few years, and one recent event has me wondering about the fate of my library.  In the past I was dismayed when local "arboretums" were gifted notable collections of plants from local amateur collectors. The dismay came later when new curators decided to trash the collections. I'll never give my plants to such an organization. But these organizations keep libraries, and books don't harbor disease or require watering, heating or much of anything else but space. And so for years I've toyed with the idea of donating my library to such an organization. But no longer: one of our local arboretums recently deaccessioned their library on short notice; After the select few (not I) were given first choice, JohnQPublic was invited in to squabble among themselves for the remainders (at a very reasonable cost per book).This is the age we now live in: these organizations can make more money hosting weddings and holiday extravaganzas, so those are the sort of things which  get priority - while the books get kicked out. But my books will not be among them. 
Jim McKenney
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