Lean professional and management staff
Plus a lot of part-time, low-paid book lovers
Everybody shelves
Emphasis on self-service
Centralization

Superstore 125-200,000 titles
300000
Library with similar circ 142,870
250000
But most of bookstore stock is current titles -- adds
500-700,000 new copies / year
200000
Most150000
of library stock is older – adds only 14,492
copies / year on average book budget of $290K
100000
That’s only 5.2% of the 276,649 titles published in
2007 50000
And that’s only for big libraries …. Average library
0
budget is 1990 1992 1994 would buy2000 2007
only $22K, and 1996 1998 about 1100
books.