Thursday, April 16, 2020

Throw-It Thursday: What's Your Style?

Hello friends! Ashley here, again.

As I am unable to work in my library as we are under a safer-at-home mandate, I am flying by the seat of my pants for this month's blog post (all my notes/ideas are on my work computer), so I thought I’d change it up a bit this month. I’m curious...how do you weed? Do you have freedom in your library to get rid of things as you see fit? Does your director have to approve every discard? Do you have to wait until certain staff members are on vacation or at a meeting and sneakily and quickly discard a pile you’ve been waiting to get rid of? I have been in all of these situations myself at one time or another. I am fortunate enough that I am currently free to do as I please when it comes to weeding my collections, as is our children’s librarian.

There are several ways in which I weed: usage reports, random sightings of sad looking books on carts or in the stacks, and physically touching/opening/examining every item shelf by shelf. Each type of weeding has it merits and drawbacks. Usage reports are great for finding items that haven’t been checked out in years, but miss books that have been used so much they are falling apart, as well as skipping over outdated books that are full of mis-information. Finding dingy books on carts is a great way to find items that are loved and need to be replaced, but misses the items that might still be sitting on a shelf somewhere. And going shelf by shelf is very time consuming, but I have found this to be the best way to find damaged items and keep our collection nice and in working order. And if you are in charge of a digital collection, don’t forget those should also be weeded, so patrons have less data to sift through to find the items they want. Each type of weeding is useful in its own way, but only you know what works best for you and your library. If you try something and don’t like it, don’t keep doing it. Find a way that you are comfortable with and make it your own.

If you have trouble finding time, or are concerned about upsetting patrons/staff, try doing things a little differently. Here are some ideas to help you get started:

Do one section of shelving when you have a few spare minutes. By only doing one section every week or so, you space out the materials you are getting rid of, causing less patron (and staff) kickback than when they see huge piles being discarded at once.

Going through collections book by book is a way to find issues that are easily missed. Example: When we did our picture book re-organization project, I handled every single book and found a number of items that were damaged beyond help (missing pages, moldy, etc.). Now, I go through a shelf at a time in all of our collections looking for all sorts of damages and either note, discard, or replace these items.

Looking to get rid of a collection? Maybe you have a VHS or audiocassette collection that you have been wanting to get rid of for years. Start by getting a report of items that haven’t gone out in the last year. After a few months, run another report of items that haven’t gone out in, say, 6 months. If you still have a lot of materials left, get a report of when they were last used. Once you get down to one section of shelving, take a handful here or there until there’s nothing left. If you have something that is a local treasure, see about putting it in a special place (such as a local history collection). Or, you could just make the whole lot disappear at once, but that might raise alarm in patrons.

Happy weeding!


Resources of interest:
Awful Library Books: http://awfullibrarybooks.net/
Chant, Ian. The art of weeding; Library Journal, 2015. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=the-art-of-weeding-collection-management
Swoger, Bonnie. Books are for use: Weeding and deselecting; Scientific American, 2014. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/books-are-for-use-weeding-and-deselecting/
Vnuk, Rebecca. Weeding without worry; American Libraries, 2016. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/05/02/library-weeding-without-worry/

Guest post by: Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian, Clintonville Public Library

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