Should I throw out these old COBOL books?

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance to librarians about whether to keep or withdraw books on pre-Internet computer programming languages.

Design/methodology/approach

For each of the programming languages considered, this article provides historical background and an assessment of current academic library collection needs.

Findings

Many older languages (COBOL, FORTRAN, C, Lisp, Prolog, and Ada) are still in use and need reliable sources available for reference. Additionally, books about obsolete languages have educational value due to their influence on the development on newer languages such as C++ and Java.

Practical applications

This information will be useful to academic librarians who want to make the best choices about keeping or withdrawing computer programming books.

Originality/value

Most librarians responsible for managing computer science collections do not have a computer programming background, so they do not know which older languages are still important.

Citation

Brush, D. (2014), "Should I throw out these old COBOL books?", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 31 No. 8, pp. 15-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-07-2014-0060