Libraries by me have plenty of shelves but not enough on the shelves. They wind up selling used books to try to make money for the library.
It’s disappointing to go to a library and not see shelves filled and filled with books
I work in a library, and we’re actually doing that on purpose. It turns out that circulation improves significantly if you weed out the copies that look dated and old. When people come to browse for books (not diehard readers, but more casual readers), they have a hard time finding books that peak their interest when they’re surrounded by “junk,” so they just don’t get anything. It took me a bit to get used to, but I can’t argue with the results. We’ve heavily weeded, got updated covers of classics, and keep up with current popular books, and they’re flying off the shelves. As much as we say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” it’s something most people do.
I mean, ok, but it sucks when the scifi section is one half of an aisle, and each shelf is only half full. I’m sure I could order it and have it show up later but thats inconvenient
Is your library genrefied?? But yeah it may just be an oversight on whoever orders books because they aren’t familiar with the genre, and people who want to read scifi probably aren’t requesting. I have to watch for that on biographies when I’m ordering because I don’t personally read them, so I’m not as focused on buying new ones. For us, the most popular scifi books are also dystopian, but the hard scifi doesn’t get any circulation.
Andy Weir is doing great things for the genre right now, which I think will help in the future! He writes in a very accessible, conversational, fun way that is engaging the general population with scifi. People who saw The Martian are reading Project Hail Mary and loving it! I’m excited to see what happens next!
Edit: I realized you may be talking about book store shelves instead. 🤦♀️
