Throw It Thursday - Happy Constitution Day

Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library is back with her monthly column and has some great advice on making sure your collections are updated.

September 17th is Constitution Day. And with this year's presidential election, what better time to talk about government related materials? Government related texts can be very dry and boring, as I’m sure we all know. Informational texts on the subject don’t change much, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t weed them. In this day and age of technology everywhere you look, it is just as easy to look up basic information about the House of Representatives, Congress, the office of the President, and so on (whether or not people find accurate information is another matter entirely-and it doesn’t stop them from looking at what they think is good information, no matter how hard we try to make people understand they can’t trust everything they see on the internet).  

Even though most people get their information on the internet, we should still have books about important topics on our shelves. Some people still like to look at old fashioned books, and teachers especially, like to use them for school. One of the biggest challenges with this section, perhaps, is keeping it up-to-date. General books on government topics don’t tend to be used often, and how much do they really change? Answer: some not much, others more than you might expect. It is not a bad idea to go through your basic texts on the subject that are over 5 years old to see what they cover and check to see if anything major has changed in how the government operates since your items were published. If the book still contains current information and is not outdated, you could keep it, even if it hasn’t circ’ed recently (or you could throw it and find something new if it hasn’t circ’ed 😊). If you find that the information is outdated and things have changed since the test was written, it’s time to update those texts. And, of course, if the item has pictures that are old and crusty looking, just Throw-It!  

In addition to all of the general informational texts, you also have all of the books about a specific political person, party, or issue. These you can get rid of as soon as there is no longer interest (we weed them after 5 years of no activity). Or if you learn that a book is grossly falsified and have good sources and documentation to prove that, don’t feel bad about throwing it out! In my opinion, it is better to get rid of something that has outdated information (even if it is continuously checked out) than let our patrons continue checking it out and believing that is still how things happen. As those who love weeding say, “When in doubt, throw it out!”