Throw-It Thursday - Dismantling is Better than Weeding

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

Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay

Kits are sometimes the bane of my existence. Don’t get me wrong. I love that we have kits and the people love to use them. We have kits for kids that include books, movies, and games. We have memory kits for adults with books, puzzles, music and more. Patrons love the ease of grabbing a kit and having multiple things to entertain or teach with. 

However, sometimes pieces go missing. Sometimes, the pieces that go missing can’t be replaced. So, what do you do with the kit? Do you find something to replace the missing item and have someone fix the cataloging record? What if there are multiple items on a record? You can’t change the record description if other libraries also have those items. It can become messy and expensive to “fix” a kit. But sometimes you don’t want to weed a kit because there are still some useful items in it.

The solution is simple. If you can’t find pieces or items to replace what is missing, “discard” the kit from the system, and re-catalog individual items. 

If you don’t have a game or puzzle collection, you could always use those items in activities or programs, or just leave them sit out for patrons to use in the library. We recently had an oversize kit in our children’s area that we dismantled because the bag fell apart, and we couldn’t find anything decent to replace it with. One of the items in the kit was a fantasy castle playset, which is not something we would circulate on its own, but we were happy to pull it out and leave it sit out for kids to play with. 

So, before you get too frustrated with a kit that is constantly missing pieces, or has seen better days, think about what else you could do with it and turn it into something “new”.