02 Jan Check this out: Weeding Books is Necessary
Has this ever happened to you at the library? You go in to get a book. You checked the card catalog and it says it’s in. You go to the shelf where it’s supposed to be and find it missing and you swear that it was there three weeks ago. Or you notice empty shelves and the book ranges have been shifted. You ask the library staff about it and they say “Oh, we’ve been weeding.”
Then you asked several questions: “What does that mean, why do we do it, how do you decide which book to weed, and what happens to the books after you weed them?“
Weeding simply means that we are removing materials from our collection. Similar to a gardener weeding his garden.
Why do we do it? There are several reasons:
— To make room for other materials.
— To keep our collection current and up to date. A library shouldn’t have outdated materials on medicine, technology, and other sections that are constantly changing.
— To remove damaged materials. Books that are falling apart, torn pages, have been marked in, and especially molded books. Mold can ruin your whole collection if you don’t remove those items.
How do we decide which book to weed? Most libraries use two methods for weeding; MUSTIE (misleading, ugly, superseded, trivial, irrelevant, or obtained elsewhere) or CREW (continuous review, evaluation, and weeding).
We set our parameters. We make a list of books that haven’t gone out in two years or more. Not every book on the list is pulled. For instance, book two of a series could be on the list and not the others.
Most of us wouldn’t pull it because we wouldn’t want to break up the series unless it is damaged, then we pull it. While we are looking for the materials on the list, we check the shelves for damaged materials that may not be on the list, and we will pull those as well.
Final question, what do we do with the books we weed? The answer is it depends on the condition.
Just recently we pulled duplicate books and transferred them to two other branches in our system. If they are really bad, like mold, we throw them away. We have upcycled some into craft projects.
We have turned them into fairies, witches, and Christmas trees. We recycle some. The majority of the books we sell. Muskogee Public Library has an ongoing book sale at the back of the library. Each item is 50 cents an item except magazines which are 10 for 50 cents.
Muskogee Public Library tries to have a large sale once a year. Speaking of book sales, MPL will be having a large book sale Jan. 16-21. We will be closed on Jan. 20. for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Maybe, just maybe, you might find the book you were looking for and others.
Debbie Goodwin is the circulation manager at Muskogee Public Library, a branch of the Eastern Oklahoma Library System.
