About This Site
Librarians, bibliophiles, and lovers of nostalgia are all welcome here. Your librarians for this site are Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner. We are public librarians in Michigan. We have both been holding court at various reference desks for over twenty years and love talking about library collections and library service.
This site is a collection of library holdings that we find amusing and/or questionable for libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection. Contained in this site are actual library holdings. No libraries are specifically mentioned to protect our submitters who might disagree with a particular collection policy. (A good librarian would probably be able to track down the holding libraries without too much trouble anyway…) Our posts come from snooping in library catalogs and from submitters all over the world. Please join in the fun and send us your finds. Go to Submissions to find out more details.
Comments are welcome and moderated, but we do ask everyone to be nice and use your library voice.
Why We Weed
Weeding is an essential component of library collection management. Most libraries simply do not have unlimited space, and we must continually make room for new materials. Weeding is necessary to remain relevant to our users and true to our missions. Remember – unless your library exists to archive and preserve materials for the ages, we collect information and provide access to information, not just books as physical objects. We love books as much as anyone else, and sometimes hard decisions have to be made. How many times have you said, “But I just bought that!” and then realized it was ten years ago?
Here are some links to professional literature on why we weed. See? It’s not just us!
Weeding Library Collections: A Selected Annotated Bibliography for Library Collection Evaluation – from the American Library Association. Includes LOTS of great links.
The CREW Method: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries – by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission
Weeding Library Collections – from LibSuccess.org
