Throw It Thursday (on Friday!) - Phasing Out a Collection

Image by G.C. from Pixabay

Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library, is back with another weeding tips column. 

Do you have a collection in your library that is seldom used, or are there some items in a small collection that are used frequently but the rest of the collection just sits? How do you know when it is time to eliminate the entire collection? It’s usually hard to let go and eliminate something completely, but this is how we make room for new collections or expanding popular collections.

When I first started at Clintonville, I was amazed at how much stuff was crammed onto the shelving. There was nowhere to go with new materials. After an intensive weed of the entire library to make room for new materials, I started looking at the collections the library actually had and what was still used. 

One of the collections I discovered was the Music Cassette Tapes. There was one shelf and I think only one or two of them had been checked out in the last few years. This collection was past its prime and was dead. Time to throw it in the discard pile! I took the whole collection and discarded it the same time. It is not very useful to have 2 items in one whole collection.

At this time, I also analyzed the use of our audiobooks on tape and VHS tapes (which were very numerous, even though usage was dying out). Because we had soooo many and some of them were still getting used somewhat regularly, I decided to phase these collections out over time. I ran a report of circulation statistics for both of these collections and started with discarding items that had not circ’ed in the last 2 years, reducing over half of the collection. 

After 6 months, I ran another report, discarding things that had not circ’ed in the past 1 year, and again after another 3-6 months, ran a report of things that had not circulated in 1 year and that had over 100 checkouts. Eventually, these collections were whittled down to a small enough amount so that it was easy to remove the rest of the collection. The whole process of phasing out these collections took about two to three years, and in the end, it made so much room to expand the other forms of films and audiobooks.

Another collection that was phased out was our Adult Easy Readers.  I don’t know about you, but I find that most adults tend to not like to advertise that they need easy reader books. This collection was seldom used. So, I started with a weed of what had not circulated AND was in poor condition or outdated. Then, I took what was left in this collection and integrated it into our regular Adult Fiction. Some of the books were still not used, and eventually got removed from the collection. But some of them were used that people had not found before because they didn’t go to that section to look at books.

These are just a few examples of phasing out or changing collections. Phasing out a collection doesn’t necessarily mean discarding every item in it. Sometimes combining smaller collections or integrating them into a larger collection is the best option. 

If you are wary, just remember, libraries change with technology and the world, just as much as everything else. We can’t hold onto every collection. Sometimes, making room for new things requires saying goodbye to the collections patrons no longer utilize. Remember the age old saying, “When in doubt, throw it out!”