It is a universal fact that libraries have a finite amount of shelf space. What most people don’t appreciate is how much work it is to make sure that the books nobody is reading are pulled off the shelves to make room for all the hot new titles coming out. Librarians call this weeding, and just like gardeners, we pluck out what is no longer thriving so that what is left can flourish.
For a collection development librarian, maintaining a collection is perhaps the least sexy part of the job, whereas selecting the new titles is where the fun is at. The parts of the job that really light up my dopamine receptors are reading reviews, watching author talks, and combing through book descriptions. But weeding? That’s like cleaning out your refrigerator, and freezer, and pantry, and before a Costco run.
It’s the end of the fiscal year, my book budget is nearly gone, and I’m spending my days in the drudgery of collection work. I started by running a report in our collection management software (Library IQ) of every book at our largest branch that has been checked out more than 50 times. Why 50? Different libraries use different metrics to determine when a book is “grubby,” but typically if a book has travelled out of the library more than 50 times, it has, at best, it’s lost some freshness; at worst, it’s a full-on biohazard.
When I say that I don’t love this part of the job, what I mean is that touching the gross books is a big ick for me. If you don’t work in a library and you’re not a parent you may never have seen a kid wipe a booger on a book, but I have. More than once. I’ve also seen books returned to the library with feminine hygiene product wrappers used as bookmarks, and these, I’m told, are not even the true horror stories of book returns.
Once I’ve pulled the icky books, I look at each one to decide whether it deserves a reorder. How do I decide? This time around, I’m using a few tools to help me evaluate titles. The first is a tool called Core Collections by EBSCO. Core Collections is maintained by librarians who rate books as Essential, Recommended, Supplemental, or Weeded. It’s not comprehensive, and nothing replaces knowing your patrons, but it’s a great starting point. If a title was Essential or Recommended, I reordered it automatically.
If a book fell into the “supplemental” category, or if it didn’t show up in Core Collections, I’d use Library IQ to take a look at how many times that book was checked out this year. Again, everybody has their own metric, but for me, the magic number is 5. If a book has been checked out five times, it’s earned its place on our shelves. If not, “adios, and thanks for all the reads.”
Once I finish the list of grubby books, I decide whether to purge the rest or send a few back into the system. You might wonder, why don’t you pull out the gross books when they come back into the library?
The short answer is: we do, but you can’t catch every stain when a book is returned. Folks working in branches are too busy to thumb through every book that slips through a book drop. Keeping a tight, clean collection takes a village, and this Halloween, I’m over here doing the Lord’s work.
Records from this weeding session:
Ghost of books past: One title added to the collection in 2003!
Zombie book that wouldn’t die: 104 check outs!
Grossest stain: It’s bleeeeerd!!!!!! Attack of the killer verso! Death by one really bad papercut!
