Athena’s Banquet

North East Library is preparing for a substantial remodeling project to take place between August 23 and approximately the first week of October.  Despite substantial renovations undertaken during the Libraries for All program, the branch requires additional work to consolidate the nonfiction collection (currently divided between the east and west sides of the library with a split at approximately 945), renovate the back room to improve workflow for the circulation staff, and create additional space for books on hold.  North East is one of the busiest branches in the city in terms of door count and circulation numbers and needs these renovations in order to better provide services to its patrons.

In preparation for this renovation, the librarians have been focusing on weeding their collections, especially non-fiction.  One of my projects this summer was to weed the 500s, a project witth several steps.
My supervisor first submitted a request to Central for a “dusty shelves” list—a list of those books that have not been checked out for a year or more.  Central generates these lists at night, as they take substantial computer processing time.  Once this list was created, we sat down to discuss the criteria for weeding.  In general, the books on the dusty shelves list are the first to undergo serious scrutiny as to their appropriateness for the collection.  Other considerations were the age of the book (books older than ten years were also up for scrutiny), the number of other books in the collection covering the same topics, the need to maintain a book on a particular topic in the collection, and the condition of the book.  All of these considerations had to be balanced in an attempt to balance the needs of our patrons with the need to create new shelf space and make way for new materials; particularly due to the upcoming renovation, I was asked to be fairly aggressive in weeding, which undoubtedly colors my assessment of the process.

Back in the stacks, things changed from theoretical to practical.  My first step was to browse the shelves for books on the dusty shelves list, while also checking for older books or books in poor condition.  This was, by and large, the easy part—even if I pulled a book that wasn’t a good candidate for weeding, no real harm would be done by giving it a once-over back at the desk.  I gathered approximately a full cart (three shelves) worth of books over my several sessions of work on this project.

At the desk the real work started.  The process was to scan the book to pull up its record, then check the frequency with which it circulated, the last date of circulation, the number of times it had circulated from North East by year, the number of other copies in the system, the age of the book, and the condition.  It turned out to nearly be two projects, as one of the other things I wound up doing was determining whether a particular book might be better shelved in our easy nonfiction (ENF) collection.  This collection is shelved in our children’s area (while the non-easy nonfiction is interfiled with YA and adult nonfiction in the back), and could be fairly described as non-fiction picture books.  These books are more appropriate for reading aloud to a child than for working on school projects, generally (but not always) lack an index, and often have picture-book style illustrations or photographs.  A book that isn’t circulating in our regular nonfiction collection may well circulate frequently when shelved in ENF, so I found myself checking books with low circulation numbers to see if they might fit that collection better.

Condition was by far one of the easiest criteria to deal with.  If a book had multiple ripped pages, any writing or scribbling inside, or a damaged spine or cover such that it was beyond hope of reasonable repair by our very talented and dedicated group of volunteers, it was a pretty easy call to decide to pull it from the collection.  Exceptions were made (there are always exceptions!) if it was the absolute only book we had on a topic, but if other libraries in the system held a copy that might not be enough to save it.  Some I would set aside to have their acetate covers replaced or torn pages fixed, but there is a limit to what can be repaired.
Age, when combined with circulation frequency and the number of other books on that topic, was also pretty easy to deal with.  Books more than ten years old are always up for scrutiny – if we have a similar but newer book covering the same topic, I would usually weed the older one.  Books that were published or acquired before I was born were definitely on the chopping block (and there were a few of these…)

Circulation frequency and distribution were more challenging.  If a book had circulated too many times (more than about 100), we would take a good look at its condition to see if it was time for it to go; that said, if it was still in reasonable condition and hadn’t been replaced by a more current book, there is absolutely no reason to remove a popular book from the library.  I also used Horizon to check the circulation distribution – if a book had circulated heavily in 2005 and 2006, but had only circulated once a year in 2007 and 2008, it was a good candidate for weeding.  In general, books that circulated less than twice per year for 2008 and 2009 were good candidates for weeding.

I would also check the catalog for other books covering the same topic (both at our branch and elsewhere) by using the subject headings assigned to a candidate for weeding.  Horizon allows you to see how many other books in the system have the same subject heading, as well as what they are; it also displays the publication date and (a few screens in) the libraries that hold a copy.  If the copy I was considering for weeding was the only copy in the system, it might (depending on the above factors) mean that we should definitely hang on to it, but if it was a fifteen-year-old, deeply battered book with more recent works on the same topic in the system, it might mean that every other branch had already gotten rid of their copy and it was time for us to follow their example.

I also found that I had to consult my supervisor frequently to see if there was a reason to keep a particular book; for example, we had many books on biomes that circulated only occasionally.  However, we kept them because the schools nearby that send students to North East frequently have a unit on biomes that requires students to use these books.  We may not need them often, but we need them.

At the same time, it was a bit easier for me to be ruthless when weeding – I didn’t have a great deal of experience with the collection or warm fuzzy memories associated with the books, and so I was relatively psychologically freer to zap books.  I will confess to keeping a few that were particularly cool, even if they might otherwise be candidates; as long as my pile of weeds stayed larger than my pile of keeps, I felt like keeping a few around that were “special” (unique presentation or voice, great photographs, etc.) was a totally acceptable librarian perogative to pull.   “Circ it til it’s dead” was the phrase we used for these.

I also found that I would occasionally differentiate between two superficially similar books.  One particular instance came as I was evaluating two books on “intelligent life in outer space.”  One was about SETI, how astronomers are searching for extraterresterial intelligences, how such intelligences might have evolved, etc., and was generally a very scientific look at how scientists went about researching extraterrestrial life.  The other was a very credulous look at aliens, complete with illustrations of bug-eyed greys and flying saucers.  The second circulated far more often than the first (because let’s face it, aliens are way cooler than extraterrestrial intelligences).  I ended up keeping both of them, reasoning that they were presenting two unique viewpoints on the matter, but I would have been hard pressed to keep the second without keeping the first – even if the first was a good candidate for weeding.  That said, it was definitely a situation where I found my personal beliefs being challenged by the task of collection maintenance.

In general, I found this to be a fascinating and useful experience at making the kinds of decisions that go into building and maintaining a quality collection that supports your users.  It’s evident to me that a solid working knowledge of not only your collection but also your users and their needs throughout the year is necessary in collection maintenance; there were a few incidents where my supervisor chose to keep a book that I had selected for weeding because she knew that every so often a school would need it for a project.  I enjoyed working on this project very much, and found that it was a great way to learn your collection and get a better feel for your users’ needs and interests.