{"id":5745,"date":"2012-06-19T18:44:23","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T18:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/?p=5745"},"modified":"2012-06-19T18:44:23","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T18:44:23","slug":"goodbye-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/goodbye-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the perks of being a university teacher is being able to order textbooks free of charge. \u00a0This is because publishers want teachers to choose ‘their’ book to teach, thus insuring sales to students. \u00a0I believe this is called ‘smart business’.<\/p>\n

Now, during my couple of years at the University of Iceland, I ordered about 20 books, and chose four to teach – leaving quite a few unwanted and unused books. \u00a0So, what to do with said books?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Unused ‘sample’ textbooks from two years of teaching. \u00a0Two of these were sent to me unasked for!<\/p><\/div>\n

Sometime during the day I remembered that the\u00a0National and University Library of Iceland<\/a> is a short hop and a skip away from my office. \u00a0After giving them a call, I found the lady in charge of receiving book donations (Brynd\u00eds \u00cdsaksd\u00f3ttir, bryndisi hj\u00e1 landsbokasafn punktur is), and sure enough she said they’d be thrilled<\/em> to have them. \u00a0Hammering the iron while it was hot, I therefore dropped the books off this afternoon, and was quietly amused at how happy she was to receive new<\/em> books. \u00a0 Apparently it’s much more common for people to give old books away. \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

And so, after today, I’ve almost cleared out my office. \u00a0I punted on throwing out my Stanford notes, and ferried them home instead. \u00a0Some of them will probably bite the dust in the coming weeks, but I’m not mentally there yet. \u00a0Also – why is it so hard to throw out my own old textbooks that I haven’t touched in a decade and probably never will, because, seriously, Wikipedia<\/a> has it covered!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the perks of being a university teacher is being able to order textbooks free of charge. \u00a0This is because publishers want teachers to choose ‘their’ book to teach, thus insuring sales to students. \u00a0I believe this is called ‘smart business’. Now, during my couple of years at the University of Iceland, I orderedRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5745"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5748,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions\/5748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}