Throw-It Thursday - Weeding to Reclassify a Collection

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.

 WLA is this week and I am on a panel to talk about genrefying collections. So I’m going to extend my thoughts on weeding when you are making changes that require relabeling an entire collection to this blog, because it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past few days. The Clintonville Public Library genrefied, or created “neighborhoods,” in our picture book section about 5 years ago. It was a long and sometimes difficult process, trying to figure out what to put where and how to do the labeling. But one of the more fun parts for me, was the MASSIVE weeding project we did beforehand. 

When you are planning to change and relabel an entire collection, it is completely necessary to weed beforehand. It is also necessary to be RUTHLESS. Your first step will be to do your normal weeding procedure. If you want to tweak your data in any way you can. Example: Our normal weeding of picture books used to be by running a report of 5 years with no circs. When we did this project, we changed our data set to 3 years of no circs (Note: It is much easier on you and your staff to get rid of more than you normally would-you will rebuild your collection before you know it). 

When you are finished with your regular weeding, it is time to go through your books one by one (you could also do this during your actual relabeling process and discard items at that time. When you are physically looking at each book, check its condition-if it looks crappy, Throw-It! Page through them and look under any dust jackets. I can’t tell you how many books we found with ripped/missing pages or food stains-we even found books with mold. EW! If it’s gross or incomplete-Throw-It! It should not still be on your shelf!

I hope to see some of you at WLA! If you aren’t able to make it and want to know more about genrefying collections, please feel free to reach out and contact me at aborman@clintonvillelibrary.org.