Photos: Let the Weeding Begin!

I started a job at a new school district this year. One of the most pressing things we have to do is weed the collection. It’s bad, folks. My position is that school libraries should not strive to be the Library of Congress – i.e., it ain’t our place to be the preservers of all the information that ever was. Sometimes you have to decide what’s worth keeping and what’s not. Below, I present you with an example of what’s not:

I have no idea what this guy on the cover is doing. Published in 1982. I’m not saying that’s old in general (I received an “A” in age sensitivity training), but for a computer book to be published a year after my birth? We’ve got some catching up to do.

You are not hallucinating. The punch card you see is above the heading “Modern Computers”. This is akin to me rocking a top hat and spats to work each day, proclaiming I’m on the cutting edge of fashion.

I love how “input” is in quotes. “Yes, modern computers have the ability to do this brand new thing. We can ‘input’ information into them.”

My weeding project has turned up all sorts of other wildly out of date books such as:

• A book about space travel before anyone had landed on the moon.

• A book on Martin Luther King Jr. while the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing.

• Books from the 70’s that we have no record of ever being checked out. Ever.

Now, I’m not saying that these books weren’t valuable in their day or that the worth of a book is directly proportional to the amount of times it’s been checked out. Just that it’s important to stay current.

If you have any weeding hilarity you’d like to share, I’d love to hear about it. Let the weeding/healing begin!

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