Throw it Thursday - Local History and Weeding

Ashley Borman, Technical Services Librarian at the Clintonville (WI) Public Library and YSS board member, is back with her monthly column. She shares the value of local history material in your collection development decisions.

November is widely recognized for being No Shave November, National Native American Heritage month, and the American Thanksgiving holiday, it also boasts a variety of other “Awareness” days and months, including National Aviation History month. Aviation history is important in Clintonville, because Clintonville was the birthplace of Wisconsin Central Airlines, which later became North Central Airlines. North Central Airlines has been merged into various companies over the years and the name is now fully retired. What remains from the original airline is now part of Delta Airlines.

Why am I giving a mini history lesson in a weeding blog post, you ask? Well, the answer is simple. Public libraries all over the world house local history items in their collections. While I am a HUGE proponent of weeding (I mean, come on, I write a monthly blog post called Throw-It Thursday!), there are some things that should be preserved. Materials that include information about local history and can be hard to find are an exception to the “Throw-It” philosophy.

In Clintonville, we are lucky enough to have a “Wisconsin Room” where we can move on non-circulating local history items. In this room, we can preserve them and house that local history which would otherwise eventually become lost. If you don’t have a room to store such things in, keep them in your collection, but find a way to mark them so that you know they include local history and should not be removed from the collection.