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April 23, 2009
The 900s
Building and maintaining a library collection is constant work. It's not like you're ever going to be done. Items get damaged or stolen, other items go out of date, tastes and demands change, new items are created. There is always some kind of work to do.
One bit of work I've been neglecting for quite some time now (i.e. the entire seven years I've been working at WPL) is weeding the 900s, which, for those of you who don't know my friend Dewey, is the history and geography section. Old history books can be deceptive. The ones with photographs tend to show their age, but the really old ones with the line drawings are downright charming. They look old, and after all, you tell yourself, isn't history old?
Well, not so much. I weeded a big ol' cart full of 900s today, a fair amount of them items published and purchased in the 1970s. I didn't get to examine them all. Some of the books I weeded were no-brainers: books about NYS and NYC in which the Twin Towers were still a major landmark and tourist destination, for instance (because while history may be old, it's also always happening). Others, though, were ones in which the cute line drawings were diverting attention from more serious problems, like all the ones about the Pilgrims and the colonial period that are more like folktales than fact. The inaccuracies! The stereotypes! It was kind of shocking when I really started looking at them.
This is how it goes with weeding. It's kind of embarrassing when you find something you've let go on your watch much longer than you should have, but then it feels oh so good when it's gone.
Posted by adrienne at April 23, 2009 07:20 PM
Comments
I have made my peace with weeding. I never imagined in Library school that I would have to weed an entire library (with the help of a great part-time staff) in 8 months to be ready for a renovation.The most rewarding part of weeding for me is that when you are done and have a smaller but well-honed collection that actually circulates more. Plus you have room to put all the new books you are going to purchase!
Posted by: Lori at April 23, 2009 09:26 PM
Where do the weeded books go after they've been plucked from the shelves? Book sales, displays, anything? There could be a really interesting display (or other things!) made from them.
Posted by: Little Willow at April 23, 2009 09:42 PM
Lori, You're right about the circulation. I think the good stuff gets lost when you have too much kind of junky stuff around it.
Little Willow, I just saw this really cool thing in a journal (maybe Children & Libraries?) where a library built a playhouse out of discarded books, which, of course, I now want to do. Maybe in my living room. Currently, though, most of our discards go to Better World Books. Every once in a while, I'll give a box or two to people who request them for book drives or for their classrooms or something along those lines.
Posted by: adrienne at April 23, 2009 11:02 PM
Have you seen the cart of mysteries I'm weeding? Those books are scary for numerous reasons. ;)
Posted by: Olivia at April 24, 2009 07:32 AM
Olivia, I saw some scary teen nonfiction on the weeded cart, too. :)
Posted by: adrienne at April 24, 2009 08:49 AM
Adrienne, does your library have a Friends of the Library group? Our sponsors sales several times a year, with a huge one in the summer, and they sell donated and weeded books. Lots of re-sellers come.
Posted by: Susan at April 24, 2009 08:59 AM
What happens to weeded books?
Posted by: chuck at April 24, 2009 06:51 PM
Susan, We do, and I think that maybe they sell some of our books, but I'm not so super-sure about that. They get TONS of donations, which they use for an ongoing booksale in the front of the building and also a couple big booksales a year. Their biggest booksale is next week, in fact.
Chuck, A variety of things. If something's the last copy in the system, it goes to the Central Library for their collection. A lot go to Better World Books, some are donated here and there, others do wind up in the trash. Some of the books are truly gross (you know, like, food is on them or unidentifiable, possibly bodily, fluids). It's a whole rigamarole.
Posted by: adrienne at April 24, 2009 08:21 PM
Too funny--I was weeding the 900s in our school library on Friday and was thinking the same thing. I have a ton of state books, old books on lots dealing with the country and so many are outdated in terms of what it looks like, population, everything. So much better info available these days. I also weeded a bit in the other sections and found books on newswriting and news shows where photos showed no one working on computers--no technology in site.All by hand in spiral notebooks. Hmmmm. I was feeling guilty but the information was no longer current or correct...
Posted by: Franki at April 25, 2009 05:17 PM
Franki, For these state assignments, the web has such great resources--sometimes, it seems, better than the books, although it pains me a bit to say so.
Posted by: adrienne at April 25, 2009 07:26 PM
I have to admit for as much as I love programming, I think I loved working with the collection just as much. Part of my domain in the last several years had been the beloved picture books and I love love loved it.
Posted by: Cheryl at April 27, 2009 02:03 PM
Cheryl, I do love both about equally. The thing I love about the collection is that it's very tangible and durable. So much librarian work kind of floats in the ether somewhere.
Posted by: adrienne at April 27, 2009 07:28 PM