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not circulated AND was in poor condition or outdated.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!”
