Weeding/Deselection Outline

 
  1. H.F. McGraw's definition: "the practice of discarding or transferring to storage excess copies, rarely used books, and materials no longer of use."
forms of disposal:
  1. gifts and exchange programs
  2. Friends of the Library book sales
  3. sale to an out-of-print dealer for credit against future purchases
  4. recycling
often combined with a storage program
  1. involves a second level of access for material
  2. often includes interlibrary cooperation (e.g., New England Deposit Library), compact shelving, remote locations, etc.
  1. Reasons for implementing a deselection program:

    2. to save space

    to improve access

    to save money

    to make room for new materials

  2. Costs of weeding:

    3. record modification

    deciding which materials to remove

    collecting and transporting materials to their new location

    retrieving items when needed

    delayed access cost users time and money

  3. Barriers to weeding:

    4. inherent respect for anything printed/informative in nature

    lack of time

    procrastination

    fear of making a mistake

    fear of being branded a book burner

    not everyone in the organization (e.g., administrators, faculty, trustees) may be in favor of such a move

  4. Reconversion often conducted in cencert with weeding; e.g., in switching from DDC to LC, librarian might place title in following classes:

    5. high-use > reclass to LC immediately

    low-use > store

    discard

  5. Weeding criteria
3 broad categories:
  1. physical condition
  2. qualitative worth
  3. quantitative worth
H.F. McGraw's list of candidates fo weeding:
  1. duplicates
  2. unsolicited and unwanted gifts
  3. obsolete books, especially in the sciences
  4. superseded editions
  5. books that are infested, dirty, shabby, worn out, etc.
  6. books with small print, brittle paper, and missing pages
  7. unused, unneeded volumes of sets
  8. periodicals with no indexes
C.A. Seymour's summation of the issues regarding deselection: When the usefulness and/or popularity of a book has been questioned, the librarian, if the policy of the library permits discarding, must decide
  1. if the financial and physical resources are present or available to provide

    2. continuing as well as immediate housing and maintenance of the book.

  2. if the book can be procured, within an acceptably short time, from another library
at a cost similar to, or lower than, the cost of housing and maintenance within the

library.

 (3) if allowing the book to remain in the collection would produce a negative value. Yale's criteria for weeding/storage:
  1. a study of books on the shelves
  2. value of a title as subject matter
  3. a volume's importance historically in the field
  4. availability of other editions
  5. availability of other materials on the subject
  6. use of a volume
  7. physical condition