Throw-It Thursday - Frumpy Folk Tales

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.

Fairy and folk tales are timeless. Classic. UNDYING. While this may be true, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t weed them. Just because something is “classic,” does not mean that it deserves a place on our shelves. Some of the folk tales we have kept over the years still get used to this day. Others have become old, frumpy, and are no longer used. There is nothing wrong with throwing the unused copies onto the discard pile! 

 

So many folk tales come in a variety of iterations from different cultures, that even if we get rid of a few of them, there will still be plenty more (and many of them similar/repeat titles). We are constantly buying/updating these stories for our collections, so why are you keeping the ones that don’t circ?! And if there are some larger collections that you just can’t part with, look at them critically. Are they in poor shape? Old and crusty? Can you get an updated edition that is more eye catching? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Throw-It and grab a new copy/edition! What are you waiting for?! 

 Below are a couple samples of things we found on our shelves last year that were just too frumpy and unloved for us to keep:

You can tell from the illustrations that these books are older and probably look unattractive to most patrons (as is further evidenced by their lack of circulation), so we said thank you and good-bye! Bring on something new and more attractive!