Throw It Thursday: Let's Get Ready to Discaaaard!

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.

Image by BUMIPUTRA from Pixabay

Football season is well underway. What better time to talk about sports materials! 

This is one of those sections that requires continual maintenance, especially in the sports that are popular/important to your community. With the constant turnover of players and changing statistics, this is one area to be vigilant in.

First off, it’s important to pay attention to what your community is most interested in. Do your patrons prefer football? Basketball? Baseball? Soccer? Wrestling? All of the above? While you want to keep at least one or two general books on low interest sports, the top three American favorites (football, baseball, and basketball) usually take up a good chunk of your sports section. 

Make sure the sports your patrons favor are kept as current as is feasible for your library. Update your series books about sports teams every 3-5 years, if you can. This will give your patrons more current information than that Green Bay Packers team book from the 2000s that doesn’t tell you who the current players are. And if you still do have that particular book on your shelf, what are you waiting for! Throw-it out! That information is old and crusty, and not particularly helpful when someone is trying to look up information on their favorite (current) player!

Since we are talking about old and crusty, those books on sports statistics that have been sitting on your shelf for a few years are also outdated. Your patrons are looking for newer stats. Throw them out and buy some news stats books! If you have patrons that are specifically interested in stats, try to keep these as current as possible, usually within the last sports season. Anything older can be tossed (unless you have a good reason to keep it). So get out there and round up those outdated sports team and stats books and get discarding!