Throw-It Thursday: Weeding is for Everyone!

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.

Last month, I attended a webinar through the Wild Wisconsin Web Conference (Post-Conference Resources - Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference) about Managing Library Collections (because we can always learn something new from others, amiright?) presented by Kymberlee Powe a children/young adult consultatnt at the Connecticut State Library (Kymberlee Powe - LibGuides Home at Connecticut State Library.). She was interesting and engaging. It was a great refresher course for me, as I know I tend to get hyper-focused on one way of doing things sometimes. I also learned some new ideas about managing collections.

One of the best takeaways I found was who weeds and how.  In my library, front desk staff (and sometimes even the pages), typically only give me books that are damaged to see if I can repair them or if they should be discarded. However, in her presentation, Powe points out that all staff members need to understand why weeding is essential in libraries. When they understand the importance, they can look at items and think, this looks really old and outdated, or this looks too damaged, etc. For their library, they have a “weeding slip”:

Managing Library Collections 2026.pptx

I love the idea that staff could see something and think, ‘I wonder if this should really still be circulating?’ I am tempted to come up with my own, similar slip for our staff to use for materials when they come back in and encourage them to look at items just beyond their condition. Of course, they don’t have the authority to just delete items from the system, which is why a slip would be great - it covers most everything and leaves space for other notes. Items should then be given to the person(s) responsible for collection development so they can make the final decision. 

What do you do in your library? Is it time to make some changes to your weeding ways?