What to do with used technical books?

Reddinr

Reddinr

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A little off topic but I thought this group may have some ideas.

So I'm in the middle of gradually retiring and I'm cleaning out my electronics engineering office. I have a many dozen technical books I've collected over the years and I need to get rid of many of them. I have anything from quality control to engineering management to circuits design to software development to running a business. These are not college text books but ones I've acquired over the years.

My local library doesn't want them as technical books have a limited audience and they just have to shuffle them around.
Goodwill will take them but I'm afraid I'm just making them pay for disposing a good portion of them.
A nearby used book shop doesn't want technical books.

>> Any ideas? How did you deal with your book collection? <<

Some random examples
Juran's Quality Control Handbook
Nolo's "Corporate Records" and "Patent it Yourself", fairly recent
Statecharts in C/C++
Transients in Power Systems
American Electrician's Handbook
Printed Circuits Design
Various books on Linux and Embedded Linux
 
I had this problem and finally decided that I was the last known interested reader, and I was not going to look at them ever again. Dumped them. It hurt, but I eventually got over it, and by now I have all new books. :)
 
I left mine on the shelf for the next guy that was coming in after me to do the same job. Because as you say, they are all but worthless to anyone other than your replacement.
 
It's a home office so I can't abandon them to the next engineer. Good tactic though if in a corp. office!
 
My dad keeps giving me his old technical books :).
If there is a community collage that has a electronics program, they might want them.
 
The internet has made books obsolete. It's sad that these references are all but useless now. Start a fire and have weenie roast
 
Sadly, I'm going to toss them, or maybe Mr Pete is an option... After a couple of phone calls to library and goodwill, I've found that they are basically unwanted.

I went to a used book site and entered a few ISBN's and they were paying at most $1.56 for a ~$50-$120 original cost book. Generally $0.36 - $0.80 each. Many they wouldn't buy at all. I was still working on the "minimum buy" of $7.50 and after 12 books ISBN's entered I gave up.
 
We're lucky to have a pretty good (large) used book store in the area - Bookmans. The really nice thing about them is that there's a Goodwill in the same strip mall. Anything Bookmans doesn't want gets schlepped to Good Willie (which incidentally turns out to be a pretty good place ro search for obscure and "impulse buy" CDs).

That said, older technical books, especially computer languages and college textbooks, are definitely best recycled. New versions of software come pretty frequently, making the older information obsolete. And even worse for textbooks. There seems to be a conspiracy between publishers, college bookstores, and instructors ... the profs require a "new" edition or new "package" of books every term, effectively killing off the used textbook market and guaranteeing "single source" supply. I'd be willing to bet they get a "piece of the action" from either the bookstore or the publisher.

Grump!
 
There is always eBay. I have purchased many old textbooks there .... Radio Engineering from the 1940s, etc. I am a recently retired microwave engineer, but have held onto my library. I spent too much time with the books to part with them. They are almost family.
 
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