Weeding for Your Library

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Weeding for Your Librarys Health

• An Infopeople Workshop
• Winter 2006/2007
• Francisca Goldsmith, Instructor
• frg1_at_ci.berkeley.ca.us

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Agenda

• Why weed
• Planning weeding projects
• Budget matters (money and time)
• Weeding shibboleths
• Weeding as a policy
• Training weeding staff
• Taking care to get good publicity

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Introductions

• Name and library role
• Library type
• Collection responsibilities

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Whats Your Weeding Worry?

• Making a (big) mistake
• Being misunderstood
• Having too little left
• Lacking human power to undertake

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Why Is Weeding Difficult?

• Desire to husband all resources
• Fear of public scrutiny and disapproval
• Inadequate preparation of support staff and
  services
• Lack of clear plan for discards
• Crisis mode instead of maintenance

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Exercise 1

• Identifying Potential Weeds

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Weeding Is Collection Development

• Reselection and deselection
• Would you select this material today?
• Preserving surrounding materials
• Mildew, mites, and smells travel
• Focusing browsers on the useful
• Eliminating useless distractions

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What Causes the Need to Weed?

• Materials condition
• Outdated and inaccurate information
• Unnecessary redundancy
• Crowded conditions

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Condition

• Odors
• Smoke
• Mildew
• Dirt
• Food
• Grime
• Water damage
• Full immersion
• Limited staining

• Markings
• Vandalism
• Public editing
• Binding failures
• Broken spines
• Dog eared covers
• AV material degradation
• Faded film
• Irreprably scratched surfaces

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Datedness

• Old information can be
• Interesting
• Useful to some pursuits
• Inaccurate
• Dangerous
• Prejudicial to remainder of collection

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Redundancy

• How many copies are enough?
• How close is a library where the material is in
  scope?

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Crowding

• When the good stuff cant be found for the
  unnecessary
• Special circumstances
• Temporary or permanent relocations
• Windfall materials budget
• Change in librarys scope or mission

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Access Is Essential

• Shelving space
• Browsing space
• Clearing paths through the collection

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MUSTIE

• Misleading information
• Ugly appearance due to
• wear or
• outdated design
• Superseded by newer materials
• Trivial worth to users
• Irrelevant to collections scope
• Elsewhere would be a better place to find this

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Using MUSTIE (MUSTY)

• Assess some material you didnt examine in
  Exercise 1. Use the California Department of
  Education MUSTY handout as a guide.

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What Is a Weeding Plan?

• Local procedures
• Tied to available resources
• Practical, not ideal
• Thorough and balanced
• Informed by quantitative measures
• Connected to collection development policies

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Exercise 2

• Local Weeding Plans

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Whens the Best Time to Weed?

• Continuously
• Ideal for collection and users
• Difficult to achieve with small staff
• Special projects
• Collection(s) relocation
• Changes in local scope or priorities
• In an emergency
• Physical disasters

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How Often Is Continuously?

• How important is weeding to the health of your
  collection?
• When is a good time to add it to your work week?
• Which library functions can accommodate some
  aspect of the weeding process?

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Weeding for Relocation

• Plan ahead--as long as a year
• Measure what you have
• Measure where youre going
• Identify the indispensable
• What wont last until you return?

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Weeding for Changes in Scope

• Grade levels using the school library
• Technical methods used by the firm
• Information provided through online subscriptions
• Added or deleted courses of study

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Essential Tools

• Knowledge of subcollection
• Circulation trends
• Current community profile
• Standard bibliographies

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Exercise 3

• Tool Kit Inventory

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Weeding Steps

• Identify inappropriate material
• Triage for replacement, mending, total removal
• Remove records from database
• Dispose of material suitably

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Weeding Methods

• CREW
• Weed of the Month
• Circulation point
• Standing orders
• Annual inventory

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CREW

• Continuous Review
• Circulation/use records
• Local interests/needs
• Evaluation
• Condition
• Relevancy
• Weeding
• Timely
• Steady pace

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CREWs 10 Steps

1. Weeding is policy
2. Gather usage statistics
3. Build weeding into work calendar
4. Take necessary tools to shelf
5. Study whole area first, then consider item by
   item

• Check librarys holdings
• Check pulled items against librarys subject
  indexes
• Triage individual pulled items
• Replace items and update subject area
• Display underused but sound materials

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Tools to Take to the Shelf

• Circulation/use data printout
• Paper slips for individual item notes
• Subject bibliography
• Book truck
• Stool for seating, climbing

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SUNLINKs Weed of the Month

• Topical focus
• Reason to weed the topic
• Suggested Dewey numbers to check
• Specific weeding criteria

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Collections with Special Needs

• Reference material
• Audiovisual formats
• Young adult/teen collections
• Childrens collections
• Journals

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Extra Help for Special Concerns

• Consumer health advice
• Community redistribution plans
• Trading posts for backfiles

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Weeding at Circulation

• Spot check materials going out
• Evaluate condition upon return
• Binding?
• Loose pages?
• Missing parts?
• Handle with care

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Standing Orders

• Weed superseded editions
• Laws change
• Directory listings become inaccurate
• State the threshold of tolerance
• Travel books
• Exam materials

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Regular Inventory

• Standing order plans
• Sets with missing parts
• Grant-funded expansions

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Budgeting for Weeding

• Time
• Replacement costs
• Repair costs
• Space for work flow

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Whose Time?

• Collection development staff
• Support staff
• ILS managers
• and dont forget
• Janitorial/maintenance staff
• Volunteers

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Triaging Weeding Candidates

• Enrichment and replacement budgets
• In house repair costs
• Professional bindery costs
• Existing electronic availability

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Appropriate Disposal of Weeded Materials

• California state law
• Ethical considerations
• Fund raising alternatives
• Maintaining records

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When to Replace?

• Material continues to be
• Intellectually sound
• Pertinent to the community
• Not superseded by other material in collection

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Relegating to In-House Repairs?

• Scope of mending staffs skill sets
• Balancing desire to recover the old against
  resources to process new material
• Alternatives
• Replacement with donations
• Skilled volunteers
• Appropriate handling by staff during regular
  circulation procedures

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Planning Professional Restoration in Lieu of
Weeding?

• Binding
• Is the interior worthy of saving?
• Replacing missing pages
• How many is too many?
• Replacement parts for av materials
• Contracts in place to reduce costs?

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Exercise 4

• Resource Inventory

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Using Your Policy

• Formulate for reliability
• Check for fit in terms of scope and capacity
• Revisit regularly
• New times bring new formats and
• New ideas
• Publicize the rules youre weeding by
• Play fair with your staff and
• Your public

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Exercise 5

• Weeding Action Plan

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Who Needs Weeding Information?

• Support staff
• Library board/commissioners
• Teachers
• Public
• Local media

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Communicating the Plan

• Collection development policy
• Stakeholder input
• Staff training

• Published and available
• Librarys users
• Absolutely everyone

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Weeding is a necessary adjunct of selection
since it systematically eliminates unnecessary
items outdated or superseded materials titles
infrequently used, no longer of interest or in
demand unnecessary duplicates and worn out or
mutilated copies. Kansas Public Library Policy
Manual
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Other Words for Weeding

• Collection maintenance
• Reselection
• Pruning
• Editing
• Culling

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In Emergency Situations

• Clarify
• Scope of related weeding need
• Likelihood for recurrence
• Direct
• Weeding procedures
• PR
• Update
• Librarys users
• Staff

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The Message Matters

• Who?
• How?
• Why?

• Professional staff
• Deliberation
• Stewardship

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Allies

• Support staff
• Informed and trained
• Designated role in process
• Friends groups
• Beneficiaries
• Assistants
• Faculty
• Input
• Institutional awareness

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Exercise 6

• Creating Positive Publicity

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Next Steps

• Postcard check-in (30 days)
• Unfinished business
• Evaluation