Talkin' 'Bout Weeding

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This post outlines the approach I use when weeding a library's physical collection. I'm going to assume that you already have established criteria for your own weeding projects. If you want more on that, there are lots of helpful articles and texts out there. Also, I've written about how I weeded my reference collection if you want an overview from me. However, that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about how I involve members of my community in the decisions.

Before I begin, let me lay all the caveats on you. My methods for communicating with faculty about deaccessioning/weeding books and other materials have always worked for me. The one time I had someone get fussy, it was super minor and I headed it off by making a small concession. Even though I've had no real problems with this approach, I also know that it is not a cure-all. As you look through what I've written, know that I've worked exclusively at academic libraries that were part of small colleges where I have/had personal relationships with the faculty (we weren't always on the best of terms, we did at least speak regularly). Also, I have never had to weed a collection with a super-quick turnaround time. In other words: your mileage may vary,

Now, onto the good stuff.

The first part of my process is to go through the criteria established by the library and pull all the books I/we want to weed and set them aside. How much I do at a time has always been determined by space constraints. Usually it's one or two carts. It's crucial to make sure I have room to leave them where they won't get in the way because they may be there for a while. You'll see why in a moment.

Second, I contact the faculty who use the books that we're weeding. When we weeded the 800s (yes, I'm at a Dewey library), I contacted all of our English faculty for feedback. There have been times that I've contacted just the chair of a department, but usually I contact everyone. 

This contact is the contact crucial step. I've crafted my words carefully and I'll explain why after I share the text of an email I sent recently - on 10/20/14 - as we started weeding the 900s.

"One of the biggest complaints we get from students about the library’s collection is how old and out of date it is. (Based on results of the exiting senior survey from last academic year.) We take those comments with more than the proverbial grain of salt, of course, but there is some truth to their concern. We add newer materials as our budget allows, and that will help, but we are also trying to cut down the existing collection to make room for the new materials.

The two professional librarians here have 33 years of library experience between us. Add to that the fact that we've also gotten our graduate assistant to help since he is a recent graduate of the history department. The thing is, though, we’re not experts in your fields of study. And that’s where you come in:

We’ve pulled books from the 900s (history) section of our collection that don’t seem to fit the current curriculum or your areas of research, but would love if you could double check. [Name of librarian] has a cart in her office right now with the books we’ve pulled. This will be an ongoing process, so there will be more books to check in the future, but if you could stop by sometime before 10/31 we’d appreciate it. After that point we’re going to assume that you trust our judgment, and move on.

Thanks ahead of time,

Jessica"

Things I included:

• Citing student satisfaction, or lack thereof. This is another way to use the data you collect: to help you tell your story.
• Citing library expertise. 
• Appealing to faculty expertise.
• Being up front about the fact that this process will take a while.
• Giving them a deadline.

Things I did not include:

• Any mention of specific criteria.
• Specific numbers relating to how many books we'll weed, how many books we'll buy, or how many complaints we received.

Third and final step is to make sure someone is present when the faculty members come by to look at the books. This is the point at which we answer questions about our criteria, but I have to tell you that is a rare event. I also make sure to tell faculty that we're happy to keep any and all of the books we've set aside, but that most of them will have to be replaced with newer editions that aren't falling apart or stinky or whatever else.

There have been a few times I've deviated from this method, such as the time I begged the Victorianist to come help me go through that part of our fiction collection. But this is the method I've stuck to for a while now, with variations on the themes in that letter above being the crucial part of the process.

How about you? How do you communicate with your patrons about weeding? I'm especially curious about how non-academic libraries approach this.

Got Dust? And Other Ways to Weed Reference...

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I'm thinking about dust today. More specifically, I'm thinking about the layer of dust that gathers on a book that has been sitting on a library's shelf for a long time. Why am I thinking about dust? I'm contemplating my first weeding project at my new library: the reference section.

Now, I've talked about weeding before, and those rules definitely enter into my decisions with a reference collection, but there are other factors to consider. Further, unless you've been careful to track use for a while, there's no real way to know how many times a book has been used. Besides, despite the title of this post, if you have a good cleaning staff then you can't even judge by the layer of dust.

So, what do I look for? Here's a quick list for you, in no particular order:

• Age of the book. With titles like The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature or Current Biography Yearbook, so long as you have room, age isn't as important. With those, I'm as (if not more) likely to use the older volumes as the newer ones. With a general encyclopedia, however, the book is almost out of date by the time the publisher is finished printing it.
• Needs of the community. I have a psychology department, so I need to keep our copy of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision, despite its age. At least until the 5th edition comes out later this year. The fifth edition of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, on the other hand, is toast - the seventh edition came out in 2009.
• The nature of the book. Does it really belong in the reference collection? Or would it be a better fit for your circulating collection? For instance, a book about copyright from 1978 is embarrassing in reference, so I transferred it to the main collection since there's a media studies class that covers the topic.
• Is print the best format? No, everything isn't "online," but sometimes an electronic resource presents a better format for the needs of your community. I still miss the print edition of the The Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors - it made browsing so easy. On the other hand, biographical dictionaries and general encyclopedias are much easier to search online.

Beyond all the factors that must be considered, this is going to be difficult because I have a forever long To Do list right now. Finding time for weeding is important, though, since I have plans for the space I'll be clearing.

How about you? If you have weeding experience, is there some factor you consider with reference books that I haven't mentioned?

Burning Books? Been There, Done That.

You read the title correctly. I have burned books. I would do it again, despite getting a snoot full of smoke because I didn't move quickly enough when the wind changed direction.

Some of my handy work.

I know what you're thinking: "But wait, Jessica, didn't you post not just once but twice last week about Banned Books Week?" And the answer to that is much the same as my answer to your assumed question about the title of the blog post: Yes. I have written about Banned Books Week. I would do it again, despite the flames I encountered in a comment I ended up deleting.

The thing is, these two activities aren't actually mutually exclusive. It's all about intent. I burned the books to create a display for my library in honor of Banned Books Week. I burned the books to get attention for the display, and the display was for educational purposes. I burned the books, created the display, and then didn't think beyond that. I had a busy week last week, so I didn't really have time.

Then the unexpected happened: people got offended. They wanted to know how I could do such a thing. Burning books is BAD, after all.

Do I care that people got offended? No, not really. The truth is that the books in question had been offered up in multiple Friends of the Library book sales and had been passed over every time. Besides, a couple of them smelled like my grandfather's basement. They were on their way to the recycling dumpster when I gave them one last chance to be useful, to impart knowledge one more time. Would I burn books for the same reason again? Well, I hate to repeat display ideas, but if I'm ever at another library and need an idea for a Banned Books Week display... Heck, yeah, I'd do it again.

So, no, I don't care that people got offended. On the other hand, I do care that there was a difference in perception. That's why I want to write about burning books in my blog, so I can clear up that misunderstanding. I know my scribblings are read more widely, but this blog is geared towards new professionals and library science graduate students. I have admitted before that I'm trying to influence the kind of librarians you will be in the future, and I'm consciously trying to influence you with this post. So let me be completely clear about how I feel about books:

Personally? I love books. Love them to pieces. I'm a bibliophile of the first order. I love the smell of old books, the soft *crack* when you open a new hardcover book for the first time, and the rustle of pages turning. I grieve when someone tells me they don't like to read, because reading is such a huge part of my life.

Professionally? I'm a librarian, not a curator of a collection of books. Books are just one (sometimes small) part of what I do for a living. Further, being a librarian means I get rid of books sometimes. I get rid of books that are duplicates or inaccurate or damaged or smelly. I get rid of books to make space, to improve the look of the collection, and to make sure I have up-to-date information. I get rid of books that were donated to the library but for which the library has no use.

I get rid of them, most times without the slightest regret, because books are NOT sacred objects. They are just objects.

On the other hand, information (and access thereto), education, and learning ARE sacred. Educating my community about the need to value access to information is why I burned those books, and why I would do it again.

Thoughts?

Weeding is Where It's At: Deacquisitioning in a Small, Academic Library

Queen Anne's Lace, one of my favorite weeds.
(Picture from Jeffrey S. Pippen)

Simply put, collection development means both adding to and subtracting from a library's collection. That's why calling this activity weeding is so appropriate: both adding and subtracting are necessary in gardening and in collection development. I'm not 100% sure why, but I find weeding more satisfying than any other facet of collection development. Perhaps it's to do with how well I know a section after weeding, or maybe it's the satisfaction of having a physically attractive collection when I'm done. I know there are other librarians who agree with me, but it still seems like we don't weed enough.

I've done a lot of weeding in my career (although not as much as I'd like), and I've come to realize that the process is halfway between an art and a science. There are some clearly defined steps I take, but there's always the chance of something undefinable getting in the mix. Further, how I approach weeding a fiction collection is a bit different from how I approach weeding a science collection. To be truthful, it's not an easy process to describe, but there are some general things I always consider:

1. The physical book. This starts with a general browse of a section. If a book catches my attention, I pull it off the shelf to examine it more closely. I consider whether or not I was able to read the title on the spine, check the strength of the binding, look for markings and other damage, etc.
• If a book is in poor condition but I still want to keep it, the book might get replaced or rebound, depending on costs, availability, and the extent of the damage.
2. The importance of the author/work. I try to keep all major award winners (Pulitzer, Newbery, and so on). I also try to keep seminal works. For instance, there's something in me that doesn't like the thought of a fiction collection without authors like Oates, Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, etc. 
• If I'm at all unsure about a book's importance, I check with the faculty in the relevant department(s).
3. Its role in my library's collection. If it's nonfiction, I look to see what else we have on the topic. If it's fiction, I check if there are other copies of the same book.
• Multiple copies of a novel are fine if I know someone teaches that particular author. For instance, we have multiple copies of Pride and Prejudice because we have an Austen scholar on campus. Similarly, we have more books about the literature of medicine than you'd expect of a library this size, but Biomedical Humanities is one of our majors.
4. Its role in our consortium's collection. If there are more than 20 other copies available in Ohio, that's a vote against keeping the particular volume. Conversely, if the copy in my library is one of the few, I keep it.
• This is not a strict rule. I've kept books where there are 50+ other copies in our consortium if it circulates a lot.
5. Circulation history. How many times has it been checked out and/or renewed? Considering the size of my institution, and the nature of the library, just one check out in the last couple of years can be enough to save a novel. Also, with nonfiction, there are some books that never get checked out but that get used frequently.
6. The undefinable qualities. There is, and should be, some wiggle room in weeding decisions. Any time I've kept a book where I had no reason to do so, this factor was always the reason. Modern Breeds of Livestock by Hilton Marshall Briggs, published in 1958, is my favorite example of this consideration. You see, there's no reason for my last library to have this book. It's a tiny, two year school, and they have nothing to do with agricultural studies. I doubt this book has ever gone out, but it is so dear and so misplaced that I just had to keep it. I believe that you need a couple of books that don't belong in your library because those titles give a library character.

The way I've described it here makes it seem like a linear process, which it isn't. Not really. Sometimes I start with a list of books that haven't circulated much, or with a book that's about to be shelved that catches my attention. The most important part of the process is starting it. After all, Seneca spoke the truth when he said, "It does not matter how many books you may have, but whether they are good or not.”

What about you? How do you feel about weeding?