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Originally Posted by: EmmaJaneDay

. I’ve now had some so long they are becoming vintage and valuable, at least that’s what I tell myself ;)

haha, I've done same thing too.  Older cookbooks are my friends and can't get rid of them. 

This is an ongoing process for me to maintain my collection. My mom collected cookbooks so it is in my DNA and from a young age I loved reading them and selecting recipes to try. I started collecting from a young age and now have in the vicinity of 1700 give or take. We have moved several times over the years so have always been compelled to cull books, particularly my cookbooks. I have not really regretted too many, maybe a couple that are now expensive to replace but mostly not. My collection has continued to grow, I particularly love desserts and baking so those are the ones I buy, and hang on to, the most. I am thrilled that there are so many new cookbooks coming out and some of them are really beautiful, although I have a special love for my vintage cookbooks like Pillsbury booklets, Farm Journal and the like. I have plenty of bookshelves but even so have baskets of cookbooks in my walk in closet plus a bookshelf in there.

My criteria for letting go of books starts with would I purchase it now? Also, if the overall recipes do not suit me anymore or I am not that enamored of the author or the layout of the book or if I have similar recipes or types of books that make it redundant. It is very subjective and I wish I had a better method. The other side is if I really like the author I cannot help but have all their books. I look on Amazon and if I could easily replace a book if I change my mind that helps me let go of it too. I am always scouring thrift stores, book sales, used bookstores, Amazon for book deals adding to my collection so I try to balance that with books going out the door. I recently set aside several vegetarian books for my daughter that she requested and like others have said, if I decide I miss them, they are easy enough to replace.

I recently gave away a lot that I had gotten at garage sales and thrift stores, trying to get down to only a few straight recipe books without the "why's" or if it's a good well liked ethnic book I will keep it as well. Also had over a hundred church/community books, honestly most of them were very dull and un-inspiring, what sealed the deal was when a chef friend told me those books are rarely if never tested and double checked and proof read for typos and errors, why not just Google those kind of recipes? Had to meticulously remove many from this site to keep my bookshelf accurate. I still have many to go through but I'm pretty much just buying the award winners every year now with some occasional exceptions. 

Building my collection: I try to focus on only buying new (either new to me or newly published) books if they cover a cuisine or region that I'm not already well-saturated with. So for Italian, as much as I love it and have tons of books, these days I'll only buy new ones if they focus on a specific region or style of Italian cooking. Otherwise I'm still a sucker for bargain bins and used bookstore finds, especially for older books that might have hidden gems in them.

And I am old-fashioned in that I don't like Kindle or e-books for cooking. General fiction and non-fiction reading, yes. But cookbooks, like art books, I still prefer physical copies and doubt that is going to change any time soon.

Maintaining: I keep my most-often used and new books I'm eager to explore in one of two book shelves right in my kitchen. Some of these are indexed, some are just so frequently used by me that I just like being able to quickly thumb-through them and search through while planning meals. The rest are stored in my pantry, which I did have re-designed a few years ago to include a one-wall bookshelf. That's definitely helped a lot with my storage issues! And I do enjoy member indexing as I have the time for it as I find it definitely helps me become mor familiar with books I have had sitting around unused for too long.

Culling: I'm loathe to get rid of cookbooks unless I've had nothing but bad results with the recipes I've tried from one. That's happened with a few "celebrity chef" books I've bought through the years. I'm thinking about culling a lot of my old magazines except for some specialty ones, like some Italian cooking magazines. I already get rid of my Food & Wine magazines once the annual cookbooks are released, and will probably dispose of my Food Network, Gourmet, and others as long as the recipes are mostly/all made available online (or I've copied out the ones I actually want).

Chocchic - how far back does your collection of Fine Cooking go? At EYB we have indexed the magazines back to Oct/Nov 2009 - a total of 3,745 indexed recipes, of which almost 3,000 (80%) have online recipe links. So maybe check though the magazine indexes on EYB and add to your Bookshelf the online recipes you like and clip the recipes that do not have links. And then you can toss the magazines!

I don't know the Fine Cooking Reference Guide. I presume it doesn't contain actual recipes - so how would it replace the magazines?

I think I am going to start culling, I'm reorganizing the home office now, and I'm realizing how ridiculous my collection is. I'm getting rid of all my Sandra Lee cookbooks, my random Food Network cookbooks, most the cookbooks I got to review and other misc cookbooks that I got as gifts (from co-workers, secret santas, customers, etc...), I'd never cook from them in a million years.

I also have so many from my husband's collection that I'm never going to use, but I can't get rid of them. He has books that span decades.

What to do? What to do?

"Culling" doesn't appear to be part of my vocabulary.  My current cookbook collection stands at 6,372, a whole lot more than my 2013 Guinness World Record for largest cookbook collection, at which time the "official" count was only 2,970.  In addition to cooking, which is my favourite hobby, my cookbooks are a wonderful source of cultural and social history around the world, food fads and trends, changing technology in cooking, customs surrounding food, availability of food sources as the influence in recipes, and so much more. Some people read fiction:  I read cookbooks. There is a dearth of history in cookbooks, other than the recipes, and this is what intrigues me the most and what I post in my blog (www.kalesijablog.wordpress.com). I am pretty discriminating in what cookbooks I purchase and if it doesn't immediately attract my interest, it won't down the road.  About 90% of my cookbooks are used, and purchased from thrift stores, estate sales, etc. and the bulk of them were published between 1930 through the early 1980's.  In that 50 year time period, the technology alone has been amazing.  So, culling is anathema to me!

We are trying to get ready to downsize and part of that is culling down my print collection of probably 1000+ cookbooks.  I already have a pile I want to get rid of but can't bear to make that final decision to move them out  What do most of you who are culling do.  Do you try to sell them or donate them?

I've given some away to family and friends, but most have been donated to the public library. One of our libraries keeps a small shop to sell the books in, so I donate there. I'm happy to think about my books going to a new home. But - if I truly miss one, I replace it on Kindle. 

When I moved about 4 years ago, I culled my collection down form about 600+ to about just under 100 I kept and and about the same amount  which my mom kept.  So we donated around 400+ to our local library.  If I wasn't working full time and moving, I guess I could have listed them on ebay and dealt with selling but it was overwhelming with everything else.  

I had a few books in which I only used 1 recipe.   I scanned the recipes and put them in evernote and then donated the books. I do regret some of the choices I made.  I ended up buying a couple of the Lee Bailey books again.  

I find evernote to be an invaluable app to keep track of recipes I clip from magazines - its very searchable and that way I got rid of tons of little clippings scattered around the house and piling up of magazines. 

I use OneNote, and there's a Web Clipper on Microsoft Edge that makes it really easy to save recipes from the web. Then I have Eat Your Books for my cookbook recipes. I go to one or the other to look for a recipe to try.