Tons of books. Literally. When I moved to Utah, I was paying by the pound, so I sorted the books and gave boxes to my friends' classroom libraries and donated to the local retirement home. I still had a ton. A literal ton. They weighed. I paid. What was I going to do? I knew them all by name.
When I married my husband, my book collection grew in another direction. Art books. Beautiful, color, heavy books of photography. Shelves of electronics and mathematics texts. And his son, with his own sets of Transformers and Narnia.
By the time we moved again, we were up to 3.5 tons. That translates to eleven Ikea Billy Bookcases, several baskets, and stacks against the wall where I think no one will look. And don't get me started about what's on my Kindle.
The point is, we are book people. That's why we love libraries. And it's why weeding our collections is so very, very hard.
However, our school libraries are a critical educational resource, and we have a responsibility to our schools and district to maintain it--maintain the average age, ensure correct and appropriate content, and the and cut the deadwood.
I love this article by Doug Johnson about weeding. He brings up many great points about why it's hard to weed, including small budgets for replacement.
One very sweet library media specialist came up to me after I gave a talk on budgets in which I railed about weeding. “But, Doug,” she said, “if we weed, our collection will be too small for our school to meet our accreditation standards.” My tongue-in-check advice was to replace the books with those fake book jacket pieces one finds in furniture stores if the standards only required quantity not quality. Whether directly stated or not, I am quite sure her accreditation standards call for usable books, not just any books in the library. ("Weed!")
As states, districts, and schools look at their statistics, it's clear that all public and school libraries could box up a few books and move them to the Great Book Beyond. It's hard for many reasons--finding the time. Choosing the books to go. Having concerns about having a section that is...empty.
What should we weed? Just a starter list...
- Books that no one has read in 3-5 or more years. There might be a reason--unless you just pulled it out from behind a stack of books about "The New ELECTRIC Light!" where it's been mis-shelved for years.
- Books that are physically done. Bugs are a good indicator. Or missing pages.
- Books you have too many copies of--the vampire craze has gone. Make way for the zombies.
- Bias. Don't even get me started about those "Jobs for Girls!"books.
What do you think about Doug's article on weeding?
What strategies do you find helpful when you are weeding? How do you schedule time? Do your parent or student volunteers help? What tips and tricks do you have for this process?
My next class is coming and I have but a few moments....but weeding is hard, yet easy. I have the last two years weeded out many books, and still have many to go. Weeding makes it possible for me to put out my new acquistitions for the library. I was just thinking the other day that I needed to weed some more books. The weather is right!
ReplyDeleteMany a teacher has a garage packed full of books and lesson plans. :-)
ReplyDeleteWent too fast, sorry. I can't edit, now.
DeleteI enjoyed Doug's article. It brought to mind one of my library classes I took years ago. One of my instructors told the class a funny story about the books that he would weed would continue to show back up to his library. Concerned citizens thought the books were lost and they were feeling they were doing a good deed by bringing the books back. The books had the appropriate red "discard" stamps but folks are not convinced by that. This instructor decided that he would have to take the discarded books to Craters of the Moon and drop them into one of the large crevasses and hope no one would find the books and bring them back.
ReplyDeleteI must like to weed since this is my second career where weeding is a large part of the job. I don't mind weeding itself it's just the time it takes to get it done. I have found that taking care of it in little chunks at a time is a good way to approach weeding. It has never been as much fun as putting new books on the shelf though.
I do have a question, is it okay to give the books away if they are not date specific? I know I will run the risk of them returning but I just hate putting books in a garbage can.
I had the same instructor!
DeleteI weed a bit at a time. If I am doing a display of sports books, it gives me a great idea of the scope of the collection, and I can pull some of the unchecked out or outdated copies. The same goes for preparing for a research block, I will weed and add new titles to my follett wish lists. I am a very visual person, so I need a collection right before me, which is why I keep wishing to be able to reorganize my upper grade fiction collection into genre's, I would have a much better idea of where to go next with each genre if I could just see them all together.
ReplyDeleteWhen I weed books, I stamp them with discard, and then offer them to the teachers for their classroom collections.
Some of my hesitations with weeding are that teachers sometimes come to me with lesson plans that use fiction books that I might have weeded otherwise. For example the students never check our authors like Tomie DePaola. They are dated looking for students and not my personal favorites in any case, but teachers use them for lessons all the time.
Weeding has been a hard thing for me to learn to do, and I am not as good at it (read – ruthless) as many others. I have to kind of psych myself to weed. It reminds me of the question “What do you get when you cross J. Golden Kimball (known for his tendency to swear in his sermons) and Spencer W. Kimball (known for his motto: Do it!)”? Answer: “JUST DO IT, DAMMIT!!”
ReplyDeleteSo I try to weed constantly as I check materials in, as I plan ordering, as I shelve, as I shelf read, and most thoroughly when I do inventory. I try to look for condition, currency, relevance, appropriateness and biases. One thing we need to remember is that we only have maybe 5 years of circulation statistics ion our collections – all past circulation stats were lost when we converted to Destiny. So – while that will become a more influential consideration as time goes on, it is not so much now.
I loved this article. I have been lax in my weeding the past few years, but when I arrived at Dilworth there were books on top of every book case. The collection didn't fit. Andrea had weeded a ton, but when they combined Rosalyn Heights with Dilworth both collections were combined, there were now more books than shelves. I weeded more than a thousand books then. But now my shelves are way too full. I mentioned to Shanna jus the other day that we will both need to work one day a week when we are both at school and start weeding the library so she will know how. At our last meeting I was casually talking with Michelle and asked how things were at West. She said something that really hit a nerve for me. She said " Well at least now all the books in my library are from this century." That made me think, are my books from this century? I am definitely going to make that a top consideration when I start weeding this year.
ReplyDeleteI really like this quote from the Weeding The Library Media Center Collections article by Betty Jo Buckingham:
Let no book remain on the shelves unless someone fights to keep it there. Let an undefended book be a condemned book. This must be the accepted philosophy of the library. Gone must be the static conception of the library as a storage organ, and in its place we must conceive of the library as a dynamic circulatory system, a channel through which books pass on their way from the publisher to the incinerator.
Reading this article reminded me how important weeding is. Now all I want to do is run reports in destiny to see how old my collection is. I think there is even a report that suggests what to weed. Am I wrong?
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent article.
ReplyDeleteJanice: I, too, need a refresher on running Destiny reports to find the age of my collection!
I love weeding. I weed daily. I have boxes marked: "Weed" in my back office. After that, I remove them from Destiny and mark them "Discard." I try and weed a few books a day. My library collection is still in dire need of more weeding!
The students at my school love the weeded books. I give them away (using clear signage) during Parent/Teacher Conferences, as well as after school every few months. The super old/gross books I toss. No student should end up with a book (however free) that misinforms them!
One tip: Use the MUSTY guidelines. Here is the brochure:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/lb/documents/weedingbrochure.pdf
M: Misleading
U: Ugly
S: Superseded
T: Trivial
Y: Your collection has no use for the book
I like weeding as well, though it has been hard to part with books. What helped my mindset over the years to reach my current weeding philosophy were several ideas:
ReplyDelete1. The statistic that approximately 2,200,000 books are published worldwide per year(we will not run out of books and not every book is sacred),
2. That my library is a living organism that is responsive to my school community, not a museum (so I don't have to hold on to everything); and
3. My students deserve quality resources, both in content and condition (I have several resources from which to order books even if my budget is less that I would like).
As to how to weed, when I started as a librarian, I stumbled across the SUNLINK website that outlined specific weeding strategies per Dewey division and suggested tackling one area a month. Unfortunately, that website is not available/functional any longer. BUT, all of the SUNLINK strategies can be found in the book entitled "Less is More" that I purchased from ALA.
Several other comments that I have: At one point I decided to use publishing dates to weed (that is what Follett uses, I think). I ran into a problem with classics such as Hunchback and Ferdinand - needed in the collection, but not the right century. I use the dates as a guideline, not a rule. Also, I agree with Joseph that we recognized that our use of Follett is fairly new and we don't have a long range of circulation statistics, though we do have a few years worth of data.
This discussion has made me anxious to weed! Someone did advise me not to do weeding and inventory at the same time because you may become bogged down and not finish! :)
Also, I feel better about deleting books when I can give them to my students. I take home the books in really bad shape, tear them apart and place in my recycle bin.
DeleteI give everything away that I weed, though I offer the better ones to teachers first. Students and families usually snatch up everything I put out.
ReplyDeleteI do the same. Our students love taking books home to keep.
DeleteI really love weeding. Especially in a new school, I find that it allows me to get face-to-face with my collection to find what gems I have on the shelves. It also allows me to evaluate holes in the collection where I can focus my purchasing efforts.
ReplyDeleteThe Destiny reports have been wonderful to help me evaluate which books to weed. I always start with the age sensitive areas and then just evaluate which sections in the nonfiction area are in the worst shape. With the fiction section, I ran a report of which books haven’t been checked out since the transfer to Destiny, and then I went row by row and looked at the cover art and read what the book was about to figure out if it was a dated book for my students or one that would still meet their needs.
I use student volunteers to help mark out barcodes and school stamping in the books, but don’t allow students or parents to actually pull any books because it is such a subjective process.
I tried to focus on doing a section of the library a month- 000’s, 100’s, fiction, reference, etc. I also like to do it separate from the inventory process. I find that it can be pretty tiring so I just try to take it in stride like anything else. I figure that if I don’t get to all the sections this year, I can make them a priority next year.
As part of our Target grant a few years ago, I was to weed at least a thousand books. That seemed frightening, but turned out to be so long overdue (the previous librarian was not a big weeder). I weeded about 1,500 books that sat dead on the shelves, had out of date information, or were in poor condition and not popular (I keep beaten up, well loved books for awhile, retaping and re-glueing if they are super popular. The kids are eager for these books that show evidence of being well loved). Two summers ago, I weeded another thousand while doing a slow inventory. Sometimes I'd put old, tired looking books into a pile to be double checked later. From this pile, I found some old gems, such as Do Not Open, by Terkle. I shared this with students and they loved it. This year, a student discovered and read all the old Nancy Drews that I couldn't get rid of and is eager for more (anyone weeding those? I'll take some). This intermittent reinforcement of hanging on to old, unpopular books makes me hesitate with weeding. What other titles are waiting to be rediscovered? Nevertheless, I agree with the author that a smaller collection of appealing books is better than a collection stuffed with books that the current generation does not value. These older books can season our collections, but should not weigh heavily. Vibrant is good. I look forward to more weeding this summer (I need time to think with music to support me as I weed; not during the intensity dof the school year).
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything Emily said! Weeding is fun and refreshing, and allows you to become intimate with your collection. My general rule of thumb is that shelves should be no more than 3/4 full, but preferably 1/2 full so that you can display lots of books.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I have weeded, students always comment on all the new books we have. I tell them the books were always there, but now they can be found!
I noticed that in your library!
DeleteI love to weed both books and my garden. it is great to see a cleaner space, and I love it when kids find it easier to find books
ReplyDeleteI agree, Carlynn. It feels so good to see a cleaner space!
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