Throw-It Thursday: Happy Weeding! (I mean Holidays!)

This holiday season let’s take some time to look at our holiday books. Books about special days like Christmas, Easter, and Halloween usually have those holiday books flying off of the shelves! But what if there’s a Thanksgiving book that no one decided to check out this year? Throw it! Make room for some of those new, brightly illustrated titles! One of the best ways to do this is to pull out all of your books about the upcoming holiday and put them in a display. When the holiday is over, take all of the books still on the display and look at their circulation stats. If they were not checked out during the current holiday season, maybe it’s time to replace them with a nice clean copy, or just remove them from the collection altogether. I mean, come on, if no one checked out that Christmas book during November or December, why are you holding on to it?! That’s some primo shelf space that book is taking up!

And while you’re at it, head into your non-fiction collections. Find those holiday, cooking, and crafting books and take a look at what old, crusty holiday books you have hiding there too! Remember, if the pictures are old and a book easily looks like it is from another decade, it can probably get tossed. Find some fresh, new holiday books to spruce up your collection! Unless you’re one of those people who thinks all books should be loved and cherished forever. Then by all means, let your library shelves overfloweth; turn those stacks into a maze of books where no one can find anything because there’s too much of everything.

Happy Holidays - I mean weeding! - Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian, Clintonville Public Library