Comments on: Weeding, wonderful weeding

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:23:00 +0000

We use a similar service now – we used to pass them on to be destroyed and recycled I think, but we changed recently to a similar thing to you. Unfortunately they don’t take children’s books which has been difficult with some of the Teaching Practice Collection. But yes, great to send them somewhere they can be re-used and money donated to charity.

By: Jenny Lees

Jenny Lees — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:46:53 +0000

I too have been weeding our Teaching Practice collection, as we’ve moved over 6000 books from one library to the other over summer. It’s been difficult, especialy as wew’re shifting stock to a much smaller library (ours is not to reason why). However, as you said, it’s a great opportunity to get rid of some really old material. I do sometimes feel bad about discarding stuff and we’ve used Better Wolrd Books to get rid of some of the discarded stock. They take old library stock and resell it via various online marketplaces. They aren’t a charity, rather a ‘social business’, but the great thing about them is that their work raises money for various worldwide literacy groups and they also will arrange for the books to be collected. This was a real problem for us in the past – although we had old stock to get rid of, often it wasn’t the right type of material to donate to charity, or we simply were unable to deliver the stock ourselves. It’s been especially helpful to us this year as we’ve had no budget for shredding. Check them out if you get chance. I don’t know what your policy is, but it seems to make sense to send books where they can be used!
http://www.betterworldbooks.co.uk/index.html

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:23:06 +0000

Yes – it can be extremely difficult with reference resources; for a start there’s no real way to see if they are still being used. I had to help weed a statistics section once and I spent hours trying to see if we could get the exact same statistics online – some we could for free, others we had to pay for. Was so time consuming and very difficult to make a decision over as you never know when someone might need the information!

By: David Viner

David Viner — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:23:54 +0000

I enjoy weeding, my first year or so at Solihull was spent going through the stock at nearly all our community libraries. This hadn’t been done for a while, so you imagine how many books came off the shelves. I’ve actually been looking for a picture I took after a day at one library (which I can’t seem to find), there is stock piled up everywhere in the workroom. The staff still won’t talk to me!

Doing such a large of amount of weeding, you really get into it. More recently, I’ve been looking at our reference resources, which I less confident about. Really frightened I’ll throw something away of real value!

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:27:35 +0000

Thanks all for the comments. It’s interesting to hear about different policies for weeding. I hve to confess, it took me a while to gain confidence to weed – and ocassionally there are items I’m really unsure about that I have to ask for advice on. Some of my colleagues also keep old stock in the office – just in case! I’m doing our childrens literature section at the moment and I’m finding that difficult, I’m not so familiar with the classics.

Oh, and I too need to do lots of weeding at home – I tackled the cupboard under the stairs recently, so therapeutic!

By: LonelyLibrarian

LonelyLibrarian — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:13:00 +0000

I loved weeding (which I didn’t do myself) in the publick library I worked before, as it usually meant nice copies of lovely art books etc. to add to my personal library at home . The person responsible for collection care was quite unsentimental about it but I remember my ex-boss saying, when I started my training there, that weeding was one of the hardest tasks for a librarian. One of my colleagues used to store the long out of date books he’d withdrawn in his office for years – but at least they weren’t in the collection anymore.
In the library I work now, weeding’s not really an issue as we collect books on the history of technology and the old and rare books are therefore never out of date. But I always chuck out dublicate copies whenever I come across them. So much better to use the space for new acquisitions .

By: theatregrad

theatregrad — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:27:39 +0000

Sadly we don’t really have the opportunity for weeding our collection here due to being part of a legal deposit library. The result being a constant struggle to shelve new stock when it arrives. We do however move anything that has been superseeded by a new edition to another part of the library meaning that at least the main collection should all be fairly new and relevant. Only problem is that the collection of old material is rapidly expanding and empty shelf space is hard to find.

By: Jennie

Jennie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:49:54 +0000

I had to do weeding a few months back: it’s taken me 4 and a half years to be confident enough about my stock to feel able to discard stuff. Even then, I still had my boss come through and double check each item. The result: 3 full shelves back, and a LOT of recycling!
It’s a good feeling: getting rid of the “bad” stuff, and freeing up space

By: Natalie

Natalie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:37:11 +0000

Weeding resonates with my life right now – weeding the basement, weeding the kitchen, weeding my feeds… It’s not that one needs a bigger house, but less stuff, sometimes.

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:10:22 +0000

Oh good – maybe I’m not so weird after all!