Day 120 - Weeding the Collection: 1st post of the Pine Glen Learning Commons Transformation Blog Series - Ms. Small - Pine Glen Teacher Librarian

This blog post was originally published at www.BpsEdTech.org

Having a relevant book collection is essential for students to find books they want to read. My amazing mentor, Susan Disanto (the previous Burlington High School teacher librarian), put it best, “Like movies, books have a shelf life.”
I used the following criteria to weed the collection:

• Circulation: if the book has been only checked out a couple of times during the last five years, I may have weeded it.
• Condition: if the book was stained, smelly, and/or had broken bindings and/or torn pages, I may have weeded it.
• Copyright Date: if the book was outdated, I may have weeded it.
• Quantity: if we had multiple copies of wonderful books such as The Little Engine That Could, I may have weeded some and left one. We only need multiple copies of titles with high circulation.

I love Jennifer Lagarde’s, “ just weed it” motto. I heard Jennifer speak about weeding library collections at a New Hampshire School Library Media Association conference a few years ago. Here is her Keeping Your Library Collection Smelling F.R.E.S.H! blog post I review every time I start to weed.

Image from Jennifer Lagarde’s Blog Post.

The May 2016 issue of American Libraries: The Magazine of the American Library Association included a helpful article, “Weeding without Worry: Transparency and communication helps ease weeding woes.” Rebecca Vnuk advised librarians to, “explain that the library is making room for new materials, making the shelves easier to navigate, and replacing outdated information with current information.” As always, I purchase current books, as well as student and teacher, requested books.

I donate weeded books to Big Hearted Books. Their mission is to, “keep books, media, clothing, and other reusable items out of landfills by getting them back into the hands of people who can use them."

Big Hearted Books collecting weeded books from the Pine Glen Collection.