Basic Principles of Weeding

I love weeding. Love, love, love it. I love getting rid of books that no longer belong on my school library shelves. I might be a bit of a furniture hoarder, but I do not hesitate to weed my library collections. I understand that to some, weeding is a new and strange concept – don’t we always value books and how do you decide which ones to remove? And to others it’s a stressful and challenging decision. So I’m sharing my basic principles of weeding.

What is weeding?

Weeding, culling, or, more formally, deaccessioning is the removing of items from a library collection. This might be done due to a range of factors for the improvement of the collection.

Libraries are not archives

There are lots of reasons why it’s vital that libraries weed items from our collections. We are not archives. Our collections should be current, relevant, and useful to those that use them. This means books with outdated or incorrect information should be removed, along with any that are physically damaged, mouldy, yellowed, or not suitable for students to handle them. Books that no longer hold relevance to students should be removed. This might be due to age or the cover, title or contents not appealing to students. If you would like more on my criteria for weeding, you can find it here 

If in doubt, throw it out (or box if you’re not sure)

I tend to lean towards, if I’m not sure if an item should be weeded, it probably is time for it to go and I’m only holding off in the fear someone might disagree with me, or suddenly need it. It’s better to err on the side of we won’t need this than hanging onto unnecessary titles. That said, if you really aren’t sure, why not put those titles in a box and put them in a storage area. You have the safely of still having them, but they are not on the shelf taking up space. If you found yourself going into the box for those resources it might be time to restore them to the collection or find newer titles on the same topics. If not, after a few months, you can safely dispose of the titles.

Quality over quantity

It’s much better to have fewer resources of greater quality than masses of irrelevant, outdated titles. I know we might think that higher loan statics and increased chances of students finding a book they’ll love comes from a larger collection, but that’s not the case at all. Fewer resources of a higher quality, means students are far more likely to find a great book, will be far less overwhelmed from all the available titles, and won’t have to wade through the old, outdated titles to find something relevant to them. Fewer books also means you have more room to put books forward facing and spread out your collections, also leading to increased visibility and discoverability.

Be careful in how you get rid of it

It might be nice to think rehoming the books you are removing from your collection is the best and most environmentally friendly way of dealing with your weeded books, but that depends. So think carefully about what you are removing and what’s the best place for those. For some titles, the bin is the only solution. This will be for books that are mouldy, wet or damaged. This should also be the place you put books that have incorrect or outdated information. If you are removing books that are still in decent condition and have no issues with their contents, they are just no longer a good fit for your library, they can be sent to projects or organisations that rehome books to communities that need them. Check carefully what sort of books these communities need before boxing them up. It’s important we don’t pass on our problems or waste for more vulnerable communities to have to then deal with.

Weed regularly

Weeding should happen regularly. You might weed on a scheduled timeline or just when you notice a collection needs a refresh. Like the books above, they are not that old, but having been exposed to on-going water and wet conditions due to building damage, they have aged significantly and need to be removed. Whatever works for you is fine, but you probably need to week more often than you think.

How do you approach weeding? What are you top tips?