One of the first questions I often ask audiences at library conferences when I speak is “are you proud of your library’s collection?” The follow up is, “What are you proud of?” The library’s collection exists to help the library
Category: Practical Librarian
This is the place where we put more serious discussions of librarianship.
Weeding more than the books
The other day I was looking at a bunch of books that teach dancing. Dance instruction books were hardly jumping off the shelves. There could be a quite a few reasons for this. I know that disco dancing isn’t as
Discards
Let’s talk about what to do with weeded library materials. If you’ve ever heard Mary and I speak at a conference or in a webinar, you’ve heard us harp on the idea that where discards end up is as important
The Life Changing Magic of Library Maintenance
As a co-owner of this little corner of the Internet, I feel obliged to weigh in on Marie Kondo’s comments that had book lovers twitchy and defensive. Kondo’s philosophy is about a “less is more” lifestyle and advises the book
Serials
One of my library science student interns asked me to spend 20 minutes with her, going over with her how the serials collection is managed at our library. That is one of my collection responsibilities, so I was happy to
…But it was an award winner!
Some of the more difficult weeds in libraries are award winners. The Newbery, Caldecott, National Book Award, Hugo, Bram Stoker, Nebula, etc. etc. etc. awards are wonderful choices for most public libraries – and even some school, university, and special
Slow Your Roll
The best advice I can give to anyone who does weeding of a library collection is to take your time. Go as slowly as is practical and put some thought into the process. Not only will you make better, more
Collection Management and Interlibrary Loan
A submission came in to Awful Library Books recently from a librarian who said they had an interlibrary loan request for an item that they were embarrassed to have in the collection. Rather than fulfill the request, they weeded the