Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library and YSS board member, is back with her monthly column and has some great advice on making sure your collections are updated.
Happy Awards
Season everyone! The beginning of the year always marks the best new books from
the previous year. But we only have so much room on our shelves and we can’t
buy every award winner, much less keep all of the ones we do purchase. I know I
sometimes have a difficult time throwing award winners on the discard pile, and
I know I’m not the only one. So how do we know when it’s time to toss an award
winner in the weeding pile?
For me, the
key is to not overthink it. For the most part, I treat award winners the same
as all other books. I work in a public library. We don’t have space to hang on
to things that don’t get used, so award winners live and die by the same
criteria as any other book. That’s not to say you can’t spend a little bit of
effort to try and save them. You could make a display of award-winning books;
you could make a last chance cart or display; you could even throw them into
your storytimes and try to re-invigorate interest that way. But if these
tactics don’t work and the books still don’t go out, maybe it’s time to let
them go.
Happy
weeding!
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