One of the most difficult things for many librarians to do is weed the Library’s collection. “Weeding” in a library is just like weeding in a garden: you take stock of what you have, get rid of things you don’t need or want, thin out anything that is too crowded, and watch the garden (or library collection) flourish.
Healthy library collections, just like healthy gardens, are tended to, weeded, and cared for on a continuing basis. Because we have a finite amount of space in the library building, we have to make sure we have room for the new materials we purchase by weeding the material we no longer need in the collection.
We don’t take this part of our job lightly and we make every effort to ensure the books we weed from the collection find a new home. That’s why you’ll see a good rotation of books in our book sale ($0.25 for hardbacks, $0.10 for paperbacks), and some books or other items on our free cart.
Generally speaking, when a book is taken out of our collection it is either not being used by the community (usually we look at the last 2-5 years), is no longer accurate (like books with Pluto listed as a planet), or interest in the book has gone down and we no longer need multiple copies. We also look at the condition of our other books to make sure they’re not falling apart or torn up. If they are, and it’s a book we want to keep in the collection, we’ll buy a newer copy of the book if it’s still in print.
An interesting result of regular weeding and collection maintenance like this is that our physical checkouts increase. It may seem backwards, but when we look at the statistics of this year (after we completed a major weeding project) versus last year, our checkouts are up by 600-1000 items every month. For a collection of just over 30,000 items, that’s significant!