Tossing is Tough

I'm no advocate of Jenkinsonian methods and I know that archives cannot and should not keep everything. There is no conceivable way for an archive to keep everything even if they sought to do so. Nicholson Baker has an unrealistic mission for archives. See, all of this I know. All that aside though, it is really tough to toss things.

While going through the folklore archives I have accumulated a pile of materials that just don't belong in our archive for any conceivable reason. There is nothing unique about these materials and there is no recognizable tie to Indiana University or its faculty. Basically, these materials are just publications that a professor probably accumulated in their office. I really did try to find a home for these guys, but in the end they just need to be tossed. Discarding materials is so much harder in practice than in theory!