Weeding, Weeding, and More Weeding

Our library is embarking on a massive weeding project over the course of the next few months.  Weeding has been done for many years, but without too much of a game plan in place and without specific guidelines written out for each section.  That is, until a reference librarian bought a copy of The Weeding Handbook: A Shelf-by-Shelf Guide by Rebecca Vnuk, published by ALA in 2015.  It’s one of those things that separates the real nerds from the poseurs… many on my staff are so excited about reading the book and are geeking over how easily its arranged and quick to read.

Using the handbook as a guide, we created our own weeding guidelines that work for our library and our community.  Space is at a premium right now and without getting rid of out-of-date, unwanted items, we have no space to add to the collection next year.  So, it’s been about a month, we’ve gotten our guidelines, I’ve met with our Board to educate them on what’s happening and we’re getting ready to start the whole process!  We’re also going to be taking an additional step and having a very large used booksale with many of the weeded items that people may want to purchase.  Our township wants our library to have some fundraising done over the course of the next year, so we trying a large booksale as our first fundraiser.

We currently have a shelf or two of books that we sell, but we’ve never done something on a larger scale.  Mostly due to space – we have none.  No room to store boxes upon boxes of books until our sale.  So, I’m giving up much of my office space – the only place in our library where there is actually room to store boxes until the big day.  I’m excited for what this means for our library – clean, neat shelves of materials our patrons want and need, removing smelly, tattered, out-of-date information and offering a new home to old favorites in our used booksale.  This is a HUGE project, but one that I’m so excited to work on over the next few months.  Wish us luck! (I’ll most likely be posting about our experience as we work our way through the entire collection)