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Suggestions needed for disposing REALLY old books

By onbliss ·
Over the years I have managed to collect some technical books. Some of the technologies for which I bought the books are less in demand (probably obsolete). For example: Visual Basic 5.0, SQL Server 6.5, Oracle 7 etcetra.

In other cases I no longer work in the some of the technological areas. For example: Java. I like to hold on to some Java books though.

I have been selling some of these books at eBay for about $5. And it costs me atleast $2 to $3 in Media Mail. I rather give it free to someone who really needs them.

I am ready to give some of those books to students, schools or anybody without incurring lots of shipping costs. But I am doubtful if they would really need such old books.

Is there no other alternative, than dumping them into recycle bins? What do you guys do?

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Recycle

by BFilmFan In reply to Suggestions needed for di ...

Recycling them is a good idea.

Then they can use them to print more books and hopefully something we want to read like a good Batman comic.

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donate them

by jdclyde In reply to Suggestions needed for di ...

Delta College in mid Michigan is part of an effort to help places like Kenya.

They send old tech over there because it is better to have old tech than new tech.

Check with your local community college to see if they have such a program in place, and you will be doing something that clears your old junk out AND helps someone else.

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Smithsonian

by ITgirli In reply to Suggestions needed for di ...

You never know.

See if a local school or library would be interested.

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Recycle or collect

by raelayne In reply to Suggestions needed for di ...

Recycle. Mulch them into your garden. Build furniture with them. Or keep them and wait until they're antiques, at which point you can sell them on eBay Gallactica for enough to make it worth your trouble.

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Keep them

by M_a_r_k In reply to Suggestions needed for di ...

If you like this sort of thing, some day they'll have a lot of sentimental value to you. When Oracle 23 or VB.NET 2018 is released, you'll get a kick out of thumbing through these old books and remembering how things were in the olden days.

Coincidentally, just today I came across a National Geographic from 1972 at my friend's house. Yep, you heard right. 1972! He was cleaning out some "junk" and he was gonna toss it in the garbage. I convinced him to keep it. You wouldn't believe the kinds of animals that existed in 1972. The tigers looked a bit like a sabre-toothed tiger. The elephants looked mastodons. Fish had legs. And the people... holy crap...can you say Neanderthal? Scanning the pages of that 34-year old magazine was like taking a ride in a magical time machine. It was a fun ride. So keep your old books!

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HEY!!

by jdgretz In reply to Keep them

1972 isn't old - heck, I'd just gotten back from Viet Nam and was enjoying being a member of the 1st Cav Division at Ft. Hood, TX (being anywhere where they were not trying to shoot my helicopter out of the air was a nice change).

I remember looking at old National Geographics that were all in B&W as the editor didn't believe in color photography at the time.

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I agree that they...

by onbliss In reply to Keep them

...have a sentimental value. And, I do like to go through some of the old stuff. But, nearly a decade ago I had to trash so many of my old stuff because af a big move.
But these days I hardly get any time to thumb through old books, there are plenty of books that I have from library and that I bought, that still have to be read.

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too late

by jdclyde In reply to Keep them

I had thrown out a bunch of old lotus 1-2-3 v2.2 books as I will never find myself teaching that class again.

Can you say wordperfect v5? Out of here!

Even a few Dbase IV. (shudder)

I kept the DOS book just because it was cool.
I even brought into work my Computer Users Dictionary by QUE publishing, 3rd edition.
"Dozens of Windows 3.1 & Multimedia Tips!"

I leaf through that for a laugh.... B-)

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DOS 5...

by onbliss In reply to too late

...book. Yeah, I remember having a thick book on DOS 5.0. I had a book on Turbo C++, like we used to do in school, I had jacketed it with a nice brown canvas paper....scribbled the title over it....but never read it though

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Can you say OS2 Warp?

by Mickster269 In reply to Keep them

I still have my pristine copy of OS2 Warp ver. 3.

I was promised that it would be the next great operating system, and would bury Microsoft.

I'm just waiting for the rest of y'all to realize it, and join with me in the Revolution!

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