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:
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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My weeding project has turned up all sorts of other wildly out of date books such as: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!
Filed under: Articles
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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Karen says
This is all too funny! You and my blog partner, Bill, think a lot alike. He just got the job in our library and has been very actively clearing shelves of books that are outdated. Good luck with this enormous task!
Scope Notes says
Thanks for the encouragement! For me, weeding can be broken down like this:
1. Alright, I just weeded a bunch of books – this feels great!
2. Oh, now we have to remove the records, strip the books of their barcodes, and figure out what to do with them. Shoot.
Tell Bill I say “Happy Weeding”!
Bill says
Go, man Go! My favorite “weed” so far has to be one about prehistoric bodies preserved in a bog in Denmark or some Scandinavian country. Interesting, but the pictures of the preserved bodies would surely give some of our elementary kids nightmares, heck it gave ME nightmares. Just a bit too graphic for our primary kids.
Scope Notes says
It’s amazing what goes unnoticed until you really start digging in. Like bog mummies. I’m guessing that was one of those “this information is way over their heads” kinda things. How do those sneak in?
Piet says
I hear you on losing the clutter, but I hope you’re careful to not remove important artifacts of historical thinking, technologies, or dreams. If the books take up too much room on the shelves, why not scan and digitize them? Take a look at the University of Michigan MBooks project http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/ – a truly massive and worthwhile effort to bring old books back to life through digitization.
Another thought is to donate old books to a larger public library with a broader audience – or a used book shop. I’m all for house cleaning – though “one person’s trash…”
Scope Notes says
I agree with you – we’ve got to be very careful in what books we take off the shelves and what we do with them. I like your mention of digitizing and/or donating. The latter is most likely what we’ll do with the removed books.
amylee39 says
Your post is hilarious and right on. I buy sci fi/ fantasy and health and I weed yearly but I still end up finding clunkers now and again. My current project is exercise dvd’s/VHS. You can check out some of the ones that made the chopping block on my blog.
http://blogbrarian.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/does-this-exercise-dvd-make-my-butt-look-fat/
Cheers!!