Weeding of library materials pdf

Mustie weeding
Mustie weeding guidelines
School library weeding guidelines pdf

•

DEWEY SECTION

WEEDING CRITERIA

000

2-10 years (computer tech books may age faster)

100

10 years

200

2-10 years

300

5-10 years

400

10 years

500

5-10 years (some science titles may age faster)

600

5-10 years (technology titles may age faster)

700

5-15 years

800

Flexible

900

5-10 years (country books, atlas, maps may age faster)

Biographies

Flexible - 10 years for contemporary subjects

Encyclopedias

5 years (consider online versions)

Almanacs

3 years

Periodicals

3 years; 6 months if superseded by electronic resources

Fiction

10 years (you may want to keep award winners)

Audio & Video

Check periodically for condition and content

•

I spent yesterday weeding the biography section in the library. It hadn't been done in years and the shelves were getting so full that it was hard to put away books -- full, I should add, of volumes that in many cases no onereads.

Our biographies seem to fall into two categories. There are the gigantic, 800 page tomes that relate every possible detail of their subjects' lives and families. And then there are the slim 40-page books for young readers about famous scientists or musicians or whatever.

Many of those 800-pagers were old and yellowed, and frankly unappealing. What high school student, for example, wants to launch into a gigantic 30-year-old biography of Baudelaire? And some biography subjects are just a little too obscure -- like Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law of the famous Anne. I don't want to seem anti-intellectual, but who cares?

Then there's the stuff that's out of date and needs to be replaced. We had books on Marie Antoinette and Mary Shelley, but they were both at least 40 years old and sadly decrepit.

Some people's legacies have been re-evaluated over time

•

One of my favorite, but often overlooked, aspects of librarianship is weeding. It's a good thing, every so often, to take a look at our collections in specific areas and weed out the old, junky stuff, and think about getting some nice, shiny, new stuff that will last us a while longer. I try to weed on a schedule throughout the year, but when something comes up - a holiday, a new season of sports - it's nice to take a look at that aspect of the collection. "Hey, I keep hearing about the Red Sox. Is our sports section up to date?"

Weeding 101

If you're new to weeding, or librarianship in general, you might wonder why we get rid of perfectly good books. There are several reasons, including:

If a book isn't circulating and hasn't for a while, it is taking up shelf space that could be used for something that would circulate.
It's nice to have a robust collection, but too many books on a shelf means that people won't take the time to browse through them - it's overwhelming. It sounds counter-intuitive, but fewer books on a shelf means more overall circulations.
S