Most of us have a beginner’s programming book that we no longer use. We may also have a book on a programming language (or framework) that we were once interested in, but not any longer. What to do with these?
Give them away!
Bookmooch.com is a great social marketplace that operates on something very close to the idea of a “gift economy“. The site is a social web application that allows people to give away unwanted books and receive books that they do want. I love it! I’ve (currently) given away 37 books and received 41. Many of them have been programming language and technology books.
I’ve given away the first edition of Agile Web Development with Rails and received Programming Perl and The Perl Cookbook. I’m currently giving away Beginning AppleScript if anyone is interested. My Bookmooch username is matthewdavid.
You give and receive books by using a point system. The basics of it is that a book costs one point; if you give a book away, you get a point that you can redeem for a book that you want from someone else. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the basic idea.
So get rid of the books you’ll never use again. It is a great way to “optimize” your library.
Paperbackswap is another book swapping network on the web that I have enjoyed thoroughly. It has pros and cons compared to bookmooch, but I think they’re both nice in their own way.