Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library and YSS board member, is back with her monthly column and is taking a look at books on mental health in our collection.
May is National Mental Health Awareness Month
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I know we’ve talked about the
medical section before, but this is a very important section to monitor
regularly. As fast as technology and medical information (diagnosis,
treatments, etc.) changes, you have got to keep up with it! According to the
CREW method (there is a great CREW manual available here), any drug reference books
should be removed if they are more than three years old. Medications change so
frequently, and the warnings are always being updated, so anything older than
three years is not giving accurate information.
In general, books in the medical books on mental health are out of date within a few years. Anything over 5 years old should be removed. If you are in the stacks, and see titles that are old/outdated, but not within your purview to remove, don’t be afraid to take them to the correct department and say, “These are old and outdated and could cause harm to our patrons.” Do what you can to get them out of the library!
On the other hand, self-help books or books on the
psychology of the mind can be held onto a bit longer. These tend to be weeded
more on usage statistics and how popular they are with your patrons. The more
clinical titles in this area should be replaced after 5-8 years, according to
the CREW method. But the self-help books can be done in a variety of ways. Keep
track of popular trends and remove those titles when they are no longer
popular.
There are fewer children’s titles in this area, but that
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be checking regularly to see what you have and what
is outdated! In this section, when you are in doubt, it is better to Throw-It
in the discard pile!
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