Spring Cleaning Time: Weeding Tips

Summer's unofficially began this past weekend, and like many in the Chicagoland area, the cold weather kept me inside more than I would have liked.

As a result, I got caught up on my spring cleaning.  One of the big projects I was hoping to tackle in the beginning weeks of June got done early because of the weather-- weeding the kids' over flowing book shelves.

I am sure it comes as no surprise that my kids love to read.  And like their mother, they also don't mind weeding out the old to make way for the new.  I am well known for my love of weeding and all the good it can do for your collection.  Click here for those details.

But as much as I love weeding, my friend and colleague Rebecca Vnuk, an editor over at Booklist, is the Queen of Weeding.  This month, she expanded her popular Weeding Tips FAQ .  You can click here to access it and find links to an entire webinar she ran on weeding, as well as even more tips.

It's all the info you could ever want to make your collection leaner and more responsive to patrons' needs. As I have said before here [but it bears repeating since many of you librarians won't let go of anything], weeding is a huge part of customer service.  Keeping your shelves neat, clean, and full of books your patrons actually want to read is one of your most important duties.  Don't be afraid of weeding.  Embrace it by looking to the Queen of Weeding for assistance.

Back to my weeding.  I was mostly getting rid of picture books from my about to be 3rd and 6th grade children's book shelves.  While I have been slowly weeding their shelves for years, I had been keeping some of the Eric Carle, Mo Willems, and other favorite picture books on their shelves.  Yes, I was probably in denial about their growing up, but even I could no longer justify taking up the room.  So, 2 paper bags of picture books were put aside for donation and 2 plastic boxes were put in the attic to await the next generation of readers.

It was painless and easy. The treasured books are safe in labeled boxes and can be easily retrieved if I want them back.  I am happier to see their rooms less cluttered, but more importantly, by clearing out the clutter, they both spent some time in their rooms rediscovering the books still left on their shelves; books they had been hidden by the cramped conditions but now, unearthed by our weeding, were enjoyed once again. It was a weeding success story right under my own roof.

So get out there and do some spring cleaning of your own and weed a section or 2 at your library in the coming weeks.  At the BPL we are constantly weeding and sending our discards to Reading Tree, but I understand some of you need to start with baby steps.  Maybe a nice hard look at your personal home shelves is a good place to start.

New Book On Weeding

Readers of this blog know that I am a huge proponent of the importance of weeding as a part of your basic RA services. You can click here to see my many posts that deal with weeding, but the most succinct one that lays out my philosophy of why weeding is important as part of your overall work with leisure readers is here.

But enough about me, the real expert out there on Weeding is Rebecca Vnuk. Don’t know who Rebecca is? Thats seems improbable, but here is the official author bio from her new book on weeding:

Rebecca Vnuk has a high profile in the library community as a librarian, consultant, workshop presenter, speaker, writer, and blogger. She is currently best known as Editor, Reference and Collection Management, at Booklist, and as the co-creator of the popular blog Shelf Renewal. Her most recent library position was as Adult Services Director at the Glen Ellyn (IL) Public Library. She has been widely recognized for her contributions to the field. In 2008, she was Library Journal’s Fiction Reviewer of the Year, and in 2010 she received the Public Library Association’s Allie Beth Martin Award for excellence in Readers’ Advisory and was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker. She is the author of Read On . . . Women’s Fiction (2009) and Women’s Fiction Authors: A Research Guide (2009), and co-author (with Nanette Donohue) of Women’s Fiction: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests (2013). She has spoken at conferences and presented workshops extensively; her panels are among the most popular at ALA Annual and Public Library Association meetings.

Yes I said new book. The cover is above. And here is the link where you can read all of the details. From that page:

“No! We can’t rid of that!” Vnuk, author of the popular “Weeding Tips” column on Booklist Online, is here to show you that yes, you can. A library is an ever-changing organism; when done the right way, weeding helps a library thrive by focusing its resources on those parts of the collection that are the most useful to its users. Her handbook takes the guesswork out of this delicate but necessary process, giving public and school library staff the knowledge and the confidence to effectively weed any collection, of any size. Going through the proverbial stacks shelf by shelf, Vnuk

• Explains why weeding is important for a healthy library, demonstrating that a vibrant collection leads to robust circulation, which in turn affects library budgets

• Walks readers through a library’s shelves by Dewey area, with recommended weeding criteria and call-outs in each area for the different considerations of large collections and smaller collections

• Features a chapter addressing reference, media, magazines and newspapers, e-books, and other special materials

• Shows how a solid collection development plan uses weeding as an ongoing process, making it less stressful and more productive

• Offers guidance for determining how to delegate responsibility for weeding, plus pointers for getting experienced staff on board

• Gives advice for educating the community about the process, how to head off PR disasters, and what to do with weeded materials

• Includes a dozen sample collection development plans, easily adaptable to suit a library’s individual needs

Filled with field-tested, no nonsense strategies, this handbook will enable libraries to bloom by maintaining a collection that users actually use.

Buying this book is money well spent as it will save you time and money AND will result in happier patrons.

If nothing else though, please don’t forget how important weeding is toward your overall goal to provide exemplary service to your patrons.

WEEDING!!!!

I had a whole other post planned for today, but this morning there has been a very active, useful, and informative discussion by a bunch of us on the importance of weeding over on Twitter.

What I love about this discussion is that it is looking at the issue the right way.  Too often talk of weeding does not get beyond the bias that it involves books being "trashed." First of all that is untrue. No library simply throws books away. They are conscious recycled-- both figuratively [by finding the books a new home] or literally.

And weeding is about more than removing books, it is about shaping our collections to represent our communities. Weeding involves removing books, but it also includes replacing those removed books with more responsive titles.

Look, I could go on and on, but I am writing this post because I know I have a bunch of readers who are not on Twitter. So, I have been actively retweeting much of the conversation so that you can read it on the widget in the right gutter of the blog. Also, click here to read 1 librarian's longer discussion of weeding on Twitter today. [You don't nee an account to read it].

You can also click here for all of my posts on weeding.  I do not have a tag for weeding because it is a part of collection development (for which I do have a tag), and weeding is not productive without being connected to a larger CD plan. So use that link to see all posts on collection development.

I would also like to specifically point out my post on Rebecca Vnuk's brand new book on weeding. I really feel like it is a must buy for all public libraries.

And finally, here is a link to Rebecca's recent presentation on Weeding at RAILS HQ.

Weeding

Weeding is always a tough process for librarians and patrons and over the weekend The Library Chick had this post talking about some of her problems with their current wedding project. Click through to see her full post.

I posted this comment to her:

Weeding is always hard. What I tell new staff and patrons who are concerned about us getting rid of books is that we are a local public library, not a repository of every book ever written. We would love to keep every book, but we have limited shelf space. Our goal is to have the best general interest collection we can. We need to be efficient and effective with the space we have.

Of course, some local libraries do have special areas of interest. For example, my library's town (Berwyn, IL) is famous for its bungalow style homes, so we have a large collection on information about these homes. We keep pretty much everything on the topic.

I think focusing on the efficient and effective collection issue is key. You need a Hoover biography, but just one and hopefully there is consensus on the best one. Also, remind people that ILL is a fabulous thing and they can have that musty old Hoover bio when or if they want it through World Cat; or, they are welcome to take the discarded copy right now.

Good Luck with the weeding project. And, thanks for bringing up the topic. Weeding is a huge part of collection development; it is just not as fun as buying new books.

Without a solid commitment to weeding, all of our collection development work is for naught. It is hard for patrons and librarians to watch books being "thrown away," but we cannot keep everything; we have neither the space nor the money. That is the mission of The Library of Congress and they can barely keep up.

In order to make our collections useful to  public library patrons, the professional librarians need to continually take the pulse of their collections, asses its strengths and weaknesses, make decisions about replacing worn materials, add where there are holes, and delete where necessary.

There is not enough about weeding in library school collection development classes. In fact, I go out of my way to add it to my customer service class in the RA course I teach. The students are always appreciative of my frank comments about the necessity of weeing, and continuously tell me that the 10 minutes I spend talking about it to them, is the most they hear about weeding in library school.

Weeding is a customer service. Having your shelves neat, in order, and as efficient and effective as possible, helps users. They should not have to, for example, wade through 10 out of date biographies to find the 2 that are the best and most respected. They should be able to come into the library knowing that the collection in front of them (or at least the catalog is the book is checked out) represents the most current and best received materials of general interest. That is, considering population size, budget and spacing. But this is why libraries hire professionally trained librarians instead of just general book lovers.

Each time I go out and do a RA training at other libraries, I also mention weeding. No matter the topic I am talking on, weeding has a place in the discussion.

Thanks to The Library Chick for venting her frustrations and bringing up this touchy topic.  And, to end on a fun note, you can always turn all of your withdrawn books into a new RA desk.

Weeding Tips for Youth Collections

Yesterday my Corner Shelf email newsletter came via Booklist Online and I dutifully read it. However, little did I know that I would be using one the the articles the very next day....today...as I worked my regular volunteer shift at the elementary school library.

Let me back up a bit and explain.

I help out 2x a month at my son's elementary school library. We are very lucky to have a MLIS librarian on staff and she is very good, but she is also very busy.  One of the ways I help is with some basic cataloging and collection development, most notably, to help with weeding.

Recently, she had a volunteer go through a few Dewey areas and pull things that "looked old." She then asked me to go through the cart and look at everything more closely. While I was starting on this project today, the library assistant asked what she thought was a very easy question, but all of you will know that it is not:

How do you know what to weed?

Well that opens a whole can of worms, doesn't it?

Weeding is a complicated library topic, but it is also an essential duty. I have posted about this many times. You can pull up all of those posts with this link.

Weeding is hard but necessary. It is a huge part of your collection development; just as important, in fact, as your new purchases. Also, as I said in a post back in 2010:

Weeding is a customer service. Having your shelves neat, in order, and as efficient and effective as possible, helps users. They should not have to, for example, wade through 10 out of date biographies to find the 2 that are the best and most respected. They should be able to come into the library knowing that the collection in front of them (or at least the catalog is the book is checked out) represents the most current and best received materials of general interest. That is, considering population size, budget and spacing. But this is why libraries hire professionally trained librarians instead of just general book lovers.

 And this all brings me back to the Corner Shelf. [Admit it, you thought I forgot.]

In the most recent issue, Erin Downey Howerton, the Children’s Manager at Wichita Public Library and a Booklist Advisory Board member, shared her very practical advice on how to best weed a children's collection. From the article:

Lots of popular weeding guides give detailed information about how to maintain a library collection. Although general advice is always useful applied to diverse collections, sometimes you need to think about collections for youth a different way. When my friends at the Northeast Kansas Library System told me that they were designing lunch-hour-sized webinars for their libraries to learn about different topics, I suggested the topic of “Weeding Youth Collections.” Here are some of the suggestions we shared during this continuing-education opportunity.

Click here for the rest of the article.  But because I had read it last night, I was able to talk to the library assistant about some of the specifics about weeding a youth collection and I sounded super knowledgeable.  Thanks Booklist, Rebecca, and Erin!

Spring is a great time to think about cleaning out your "MUSTIE" collections too, and Erin's article is a great place to start getting inspired to take action.

ILA Conference: Day 2-- RA, Collection Development, and Patron Service

No surprise here, but today my personal theme of learning was RA, Collection Development and Patron Service. How the three go together.

PLEASE NOTE: THERE ARE PROBABLY TYPOS HERE. IN ORDER TO GET THESE POSTS OUT QUICKLY, I AM ON SCANNING THEN AFTER WRITING THEM DURING THE PROGRAM.

First session featured my former co-worker [and boss] Kathy and a former student Ally who both work together in Readers’ Sevices at Skokie Public Library.

We Welcome Everyone - Inclusive Readers’ Advisory:

We all agree that we need diverse books. Indeed, we as readers' advisors need to suggest more diverse books. Come learn how we challenged our patrons to read (and our staff to suggest) more diversely and how we're making diversity a normal part of readers' advisory.

Allyson CoanAdult Services LibrarianSkokie Public Library 

Kathy SextonReaders Services SupervisorSkokie Public Library

You can access their slides here. Search by either presenters’ last name and it will pull right up. They have a lot of pictures of the things write about below.

• Skokie is working very hard to be more consciously diverse. They began by acknowledging that not only is selection privilege, but so is suggestion. Meaning that you can work as hard as you want to make your collections more diverse, but if your staff doesn’t know about these titles and/or never suggests them-- these books won’t get read. 
• They consciously changed their popular “Good Reads” shelf. It is their “most wanted” display right near the main entrance. Instead of simply buy extra copies of the books that had the highest circulation, they made a conscious decision to include diverse books and it is so popular that they have to refill it constantly. 
• If you give people more diverse options, they do read them. 
• Skokie Welcomes Everyone [Skokiecares.org] was a community wide initiative toward inclusion and diversity.
• They talked about their Spring Reading Challenge and how they challenged people to read something new to them. Here is the link to the form. People loved it. They loved being challenged to try something new. The staff was there to help based on their preferences, likes, and dislikes. 
• See the slides (link above) for some of the results and feedback of what they suggested and how patrons enjoyed it.
• They also mentioned how working together as a staff- 25 ppl involved- to make suggestions was in and of itself a great training tool. Everyone involved was seeing the requests and the suggestions. Everyone learned about new authors while working together!!!
• 86 people participated over 3 months. 21 ppl did more than one challenge.  1 person did 7. Several did 5. That’s a lot over 3 months.
• Because they asked people to challenge themselves and made the process personal, they got very valuable and honest feedback. They also did a very short- 2 minute survey to all participants. One question was,” Were you introduced to a new genre, format, or author you will try again in the future?” Over 70% said yes.
• To help yourself improve- you need to be conscious about it. Ally found the image  on the DEMCO website, printed it out and puts it by her desk to keep herself honest.
• They analyzed all of the books they suggested through their BookMatch program. The results are in the slides. For example, they suggested a lot of white women. Okay, that’s their baseline. Now they know this and try NOT to always suggest those authors. 
• THIS CAN BE DONE. YOU HAVE TO BE INTENTIONAL. SEEK OUT THESE DIVERSE AUTHORS.
• There were times this was hard. Kathy noticed that publishers are not publishing these books. YA books do a much better job of publishing stories that raise up marginalized ppl. But adult books-- not so much. Kathy’s advice is that you can’t get frustrated. When you are intentional, it changes the landscape on what you put out there, but you can only suggest what is published. We are not up to speed there yet.
• In their analysis [agin in slides] they also looked at own voices question too.
• They also included a slide of all of their resources that they used. Check them out.
• The overall key here is that you can’t wait for diversity to happen. You need to make a conscious decision to be inclusive. This is HUGE. I have many friends and colleagues at Skokie and I am proud of them. They have a diverse staff and a diverse community, but even then, they were falling behind. If you learn nothing else from this series of posts from the ILA conference, I hope you take this away.

Next was Weeding Wonderland:

Selecting materials is only half of the collection development process. Welcome to the Weeding Wonderland, where we continue the collection development process. We will talk about the tricky and challenging problem of saying “Be Gone!” to the weeds in your collection. We will provide you with some tips, tricks and tools for evaluating your collection that support the patron experience and access to materials.

Patricia SchwartzTeen LibrarianWest Branch, Aurora Public Library 

Carol McFarlandReference LibrarianLemont Public Library 

Monica MinnickChildren's Services LibrarianNaperville Public Library 

Dorothy RyanDirectorMcKinstry Library, Lincoln College 

Karen ToonenAdult Services LibrarianNaperville Public Library

They have handouts and slides here. Search by any of the presenters’ last name and it will come right up.

Also, Karen will be doing a longer version of her part-- about weeding fiction-- at ARRTCon.

• Why Weed? It is an important part of collection development. Easy to choose books, hard to decide what to remove.
• Tend your collection like it is garden. Remove the weeds and let the flowers shine. With over crowded shelves, good books get lost.
• Weeding is also a great way for you, the selector to know your collection.
• Weeding regularly also lets you see how highly packed your shelves are in certain sections.
• Reports vs. touching your books- Do what works best for you. Both work.
• Inspect all areas for circulation rates, condition, and representation of diverse voices
• How to get your staff to buy in?
• Know your stakeholders. Anticipate their questions. Are you going to replace that?, for example. Book as a sacred object. Some stakeholders thought just being a book means you can’t get rid of it.
• Be ready to explain your rationale/criteria. How will you explain yourself.
• Have a collection development policy to back you up. 
• Educate stakeholders that weeding is part of a healthy library collection.
• Make and argument: Basic ones-- average age of collection, circulating stats, chaining needs
• Communicate! You have to be as transparent as possible. Accept feedback and suggestions about the process. Especially the disposal! People want to here that you are donating or recycling. Anything but throw in trash. [Sometimes you have to, e.g.. mold]. Allow veto power.
• Tips, Tricks, & Policies
• Easiest is weeding by condition.
• By the way-- mold is bad. It spreads!
• Policies are for everything else. The handout [link above] had examples of deselection 
• MUSTIE
• Reports! ILS or Collection HQ. You pick the criteria that you can use to weed by. Last checkout date, date published, number of checkout.
• At Naperville-- they don’t want more than 5% of the collection to be “dead.” Dead for them is not checked out in 18 months.
• When they weren’t regularly weeding- it was a hard and fast rule. A place to start to deep clean collection. Now it is just a maintenance issue. Everything is circulating more now that collection is cleaned up.
• Your library needs to create their own criteria-- and you must be ruthless with the criteria. Very few exceptions.
• Examples of books in pristine condition and are very new that didn’t circulate. But we have to get rid of the things that your patrons don’t want to make room for what they do want.
• Work on small sections at a time. Work on a single shelf at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself.
• Weed daily. Pull old looking books as you are helping patrons.
• If you don’t weed daily, you end up weeding hundreds of books at a time, and when patrons see stacks of weeded books, that is bad PR.
• The more you weed, the easier it gets. Get rid of it and you will replace it with a book that will become someone’s favorite.
• Other questions to ask yourself? Is there is another copy-- yes. Is it an award winner? Can you get it in another format. Is it part of your local history. Would you be embarrassed if your library didn’t own it?
• WE ARE NOT ARCHIVAL LIBRARIES! WE CANNOT KEEP EVERYTHING.
• Where to start? Technology is a great place to start. Science. Kids biographies of no longer popular people.
• Fiction vs Nonfiction. So much more documentation on weeding Nonfiction. 
• Weeding for age doesn’t work in fiction. Ex: Agatha Christie is old but goes out like crazy.
• But “Ugly” works. If you are embarrassed to take it home, get rid of it. You can replace it.
• Elsewhere-- can I get it ILL?
• Weeding series! If you pull your dead items and many come from the same series, it might be time for that series to go.
• What if book 8 in a 10 book series is dead? For series it is great to keep newest books in a series and the first couple. This keeps fans of series happy and still allows you to introduce new readers to the series. You can get them the middle books through ILL.
• Make a MAX number of copies for in demand titles. Only make rare exceptions. 
• The James Patterson problem. There are too many books. Evanovich, Sanford, Steel and Woods also write multiple books a year. These titles will never show up on your dead reports. You have to go in and weed them with higher standards. 
• Times to be more cautious-- audio and large print for less popular authors. You might be able to replace them.
• Common excuses not to read books-- It’s my favorite! Oh well. You can give your favorite book a chance. Hand sell it or put it on displays. If you can’t get it to circle in a year-- it has to go. If you really need to have it, weed it, put it on book sale and buy it for your home collection.
• IT’S NOT YOUR LIBRARY OR YOUR COLLECTION. It’s your community’s and you are the curator for THEM. 
• It is a popularity contest. Our shelf space is precious
• If our collection development policy is “Give Them What They Want,” then our weeding policy should be “Get Rid of What They Don’t Want.”
• Goal is to have 20% of your collection out at any one time.
• After you ruthlessly weed, you will have more space for cover out shelving. Circ stats prove that shelf out circulate at double the rate.
• You can always put some dead books face out to give them one last chance.
• Good books or classics sometimes just need a new cover.
• Wrap up:
• Weed early, Weed Often!
• Questions: What to do with employees who go behind your back- At Naperville they review you each year on if you collection is 5% dead or less!
• Changing your shelving to based on how readers read. So world building nonfiction about a fiction series like Pern or George RR Martin needs to be shelved with the fiction series they are about. That is where they will circulate.
• Suggestion from audience: Make a sign for selectors- “Every purchase is a future discard.” LOVE IT!

Don’t Throw Away Your Shot at Stats: How To Build Useful Collection Statistics from Scratch:

Why look elsewhere for collection statistics when all of the data is already stored in your ILS? Learn how to use your collection data to create meaningful statistics through commonly available applications, and gain insight into your collections by conducting a collection analysis. Discover what data is available in your database, how to retrieve it, and how to present it so selectors can make better-informed ordering decisions. 

Rebecca BartlettHead of Technical ServicesLa Grange Public Library 

Kristina JohnstonCollection Services LibrarianGail Borden Public Library District 

Lisa BobisTechnical Services ManagerJoliet Public Library 

Matt HammermeisterILS ManagerPinnacle Library Cooperative 

Susan LytinenData Projects SpecialistGail Borden Public Library District

They have handouts and slides here. Search by any of the presenters’ last name and it will come right up.

I went to this session- which was more focused on cataloging- to see the cataloging side of the collection story. I have written more about the importance of RA people working with catalogers here. Hearing the catalogers side of the story was very enlightening. Working with “front line staff” issues came up. I was so glad to hear them. I hope these notes inspire some of you seek out training or information from tech services people. They are our allies, not our enemies.

Also, this session was excellent to go to right after the weeding session!

• Set up your collection to get the right stats that you need and know that they are accurate.
• Think broad and then go specific- stat codes and collection codes.
• Also ask staff what they want and set up your collection in the ILS that way.
• Multiple codes. Some collections have one level, others you have multiple breakouts with codes.
• Multiple formats need to be standardized. So you get- Juvenile-Fiction-Audio. Make sure same as the books just add the audio. You will get better stats.
• DATA CLEANUP is important. If you don’t have the right stat and collection codes with the right call numbers, your stats will be wrong.
• How do you determine what stats you want?
• How often? all the time, fiscal year, calendar year.
• How specific- location, format, every 10 for Dewey, etc...
• Data retrieval. Schedule your reports so data comes when you need it. If your report is 10-12 steps, it is easy to forget one. Also this way you know it always runs at the same time, the same way.
• Compare apples to apples. 
• They talked about some useful reports
• Relative Use: the ratio of the % of the library’s circumstance vs, % of library’s holding for each collection. You want a 1-1 ratio. If you have 40% adult NF, it should be 40% of your circ. Higher and you don’t have enough, lower- you have too much.
• Turnover Rate: Circs per item spread out over entire collection. 
• % of items checked out. For entire collection. Yes. But you should also look at New items separately. They should be higher.
• They talked about active use vs dead collection. Dead collections came up in weeding session.
• Average Age. Good to run but serials can skew your results. You need to make a choice.
• At Joliet, they email out the reports to all selectors each month. They can break them down as much or as little as that selector wants/needs.
• At Gail Borden they compare circulation to total holdings. Similar to the previous ppl’s relative use. But they use a visualization model with charts and graphs.
• Why you should visualize data?
• Makes patterns and trends easy to spot. Quicker. Colors and shapes easier to digest than numbers.
• Keep the graphics simple when you visualize.
• Data needs to be filtered and formatted. Pivot tables allow you to drag and drop the data you want without having to manipulate it. You choose what to compare and the table does it.
• You have to normalize your data- You can’t compare circulation to holdings. 
• Using Excel Pivot Charts. 
• Play with the charts and click around. It doesn’t change the base data, it is only changing how you visualize it. [Becky: I love this advice.]
• Use Lynda.com for a class. Ask Google.
• Using Access tables and queries to get more data if your ILS doesn’t gather it. She went into a lot of detail about how to do it. If you are interested contact Susan in the list above.
• Using Collection Statistics for Staff Training:
• With Rebecca from my home library!
• She talked about the LGPL Collection Development Plan. Plan is 88 pages. Policy is 2 pages.
• Each selector wrote their sections. Rebecca provided the statistics.
• Showed how they use statistics to help selectors buy and weed in their collections.
• They can use statistics and reports to track collection development performance over time. They now have 4 years of data for every collection in library.
• Use for purchasing and weeding yes, but also to evaluate off and new formats.
• What to get rid of
• Where to grow-- allocating shelf space
• Allows you to decide what collections to promote and display.
• Questions: What about staff who use the relative use stats as an excuse to not weed? If relative use is 1:1 I don’t have to do anything. In that case dead items report from Collection HQ is key. Even in a 1:1 relative use collection, there ARE dead items.
• Q: Grubby in Collection HQ-- Different criteria for different collections.
• Q: What stats do you give the board each month? Board get simplified version in broad categories. Also Year to date and comparison same month for a different year.
• Q: Do you get pushback from your front line staff when you present stats? Visualization of data has helped with that. When you show them numbers, they shut down. When you make it super simple, people are more willing to accept that a change is needed. You can SEE it.
• Overall advice- share this data with all staff-- selectors and front line. Let them know what collections are doing well, which are struggling. Front line staff don’t have the time to assess things like “average age.” Joliet woman showed reference that the average age of their reference collection was 25yrs. Yikes! They didn’t know. Once they knew, they wanted to work on the collection.
• The staff need the data to understand their collections better. They can see the bigger picture and make better choices. 

Weeding and NPR Report on Libraries Destroying Books

Over on Shelfrenewal, Rebecca posted about librarians' mixed feelings about weeding.  She (like me) enjoys weeding because it is a great tool toward making our collections more efficient and effective.  She moderated a webinar on the topic and included some of the transcript here.

I have had a few memorable rants on the importance of weeding.  Use this link to access all of them.

From a post from last year simply titled, "Weeding":

Without a solid commitment to weeding, all of our collection development work is for naught. It is hard for patrons and librarians to watch books being "thrown away," but we cannot keep everything; we have neither the space nor the money. That is the mission of The Library of Congress and they can barely keep up.

In order to make our collections useful to  public library patrons, the professional librarians need to continually take the pulse of their collections, asses its strengths and weaknesses, make decisions about replacing worn materials, add where there are holes, and delete where necessary.

Now NPR has brought up the question of what happens to the books when we weed them from the library.  In this much talked about report, they give the issue fair treatment.  Most books are sold for money to buy new books or donated, but yes, unfortunately sometimes the weeded books end up recycled.  Although I do not want to ever be responsible for the destruction of a book, as the article points out, it is impossible to expect libraries to keep every book that ever enters their library forever.


Now you can see why Rebecca calls weeding a polarizing topic.  But don't let that stop you.  Go on out and weed something.  Even if you just get rid of that one battered copy of a book that no one has checked out in 10 years, you are helping to make your collection stronger and more useful.  You will have happier patrons as a result.

Collection Development Crash Courses via ALA

Look, I know with the confusion around IMLS funding that a lot of Continuing Education is on hold in most library budgets and especially in State Library budgets (which is how most libraries get their CE) . That is why I want to point you to this ALA Courses option this July as you can get four classes for staff across all of your service areas for less than hiring me to make a virtual visit to your library.

And all four of these people are excellent. I not only know and trust them, I helped to bring them to eCourses for these classes. And, they have done this previously. The reactions were so positive, they are back.

Click here for all of details or use the links below. Please note, you can buy only the classes you want, but honestly, it is a much better deal to get them all and just make sure the correct people at your library watch the one for them.

Webinars and eCourses for Library Professionals Collection Development Crash Course A bundle of four 90-minute webinars.

Wednesdays, July 2, 9, 16, and 23, 2025 2:30 pm Eastern | 1:30 pm Central | 12:30 pm Mountain | 11:30 am Pacific

If you’re new to collection development, it can be intimidating. Responsibility for a library collection has many facets, from assessing the needs of your community to staying current. We’ve assembled a team of four collection development experts for this crash course webinar series, and they’ll take you through everything you need to get started.   This four-part event includes the following sessions (all sessions also available for individual purchase): Developing the Youth Collection with Julie Jurgens: Wednesday, July 2, 2025 Developing the Adult Fiction Collection with Lila Denning: Wednesday, July 9, 2025 Developing the Adult Nonfiction Collection with Stephanie Sendaula: Wednesday, July 16, 2025 Weeding Your Collection with Karen Toonen: Wednesday, July 23, 2025 Each session also available for separate registration Developing the Youth Collection In this webinar, you’ll learn the basics of collection development for kids and teens. You'll also learn about how to prepare for and handle material challenges and how to make sure your collection development policy provides adequate support for these situations. Developing the Adult Fiction Collection Diversity is the key to a strong adult fiction collection. In this webinar, collection development expert Lila Denning will cover how you can grow and diversify your collection to make better readers advisory choices and offer stronger materials to your patrons. Developing the Adult Nonfiction Collection In this event, collection development expert Stephanie Sendaula will show you best practices for developing, maintaining, and weeding the adult nonfiction collection, with an emphasis on staying up to date with trends in popular areas such as memoirs and cookbooks. Weeding Your Collection A truly patron-driven collection serves its community effectively, and with continually increasing demands taxing libraries’ limited resources, every item in a physical collection must justify its shelf space. In this webinar, weeding expert Karen Toonen will cover the challenges inherent to weeding and share tips, tricks, and tools for collection evaluation.

After participating in this event, you will:

• Have a stronger understanding of how to get started with nonfiction collection development
• Be equipped to stay up to date with nonfiction trends that can help you to keep a collection current
• Gain the confidence to purchase books in subjects outside of your usual reading interests
• Understand the foundational reasons for diversifying your collection and be able to reliably discover diverse materials
• Understand strategies for recommending works either actively or passively that go beyond your lived experience or the perceived lived experience of your community
• Recognize the importance of the book atmosphere and how libraries, publishers, reviewers, vendors, authors, bookstores and the public all work together
• Understand the fundamentals of curating and maintaining collections for youth and teens
• Have a list of resources to consult, including where to find reviews and other collection support tools.
• Feel empowered to advocate for materials for youth and teens
• Be able to articulate to internal and external stakeholders why weeding is as important as selection as part of a robust collection development plan
• Be able to revitalize collections, increase circulation, enhance visibility of diverse materials, and highlight materials relevant to your communities with confidence
• Be able to implement logical, rigorous weeding doctrines which will free areas for new collections, promote patron driven collection policies, and create additional space.

Click here to learn more and register.

Keeping the Shelves In Order

 

Every other week I volunteer at my daughter's elementary school library. Although I am often consulted on larger issues pertaining to the library's collection and do provide quite a bit of RA to the students, I am mostly there to help shelve the books.

Also, this week at the BPL, our page injured herself and I spent a large part of my shift shelving books.

Now, many librarians would say that using a professional librarian to shelve books over other more "worthy" duties is a poor use of the librarian's skills and expertise. I am here to tell you today that those people are flat out wrong.

 

First and foremost, neat, clean, and ordered book shelves are THE most important service you can provide for you patrons. Think about it, if a patron comes in looking for a book, checks the catalog, and goes to the exact place where the book is supposed to be and cannot find it, how do you think they are going to feel about the service you are providing?

Many librarians think it is beneath them to keep the shelves in order. I would argue that as the professionals, we should be responsible for keeping them in order. If that means getting in there and shelf reading (which means you go through a section, book by book, to make sure they are in the correct order) or literally shelving the books, so be it. We need to take responsibility for our collections from the selection of materials to their home on the shelves.

This does not mean we should fire all of our pages and start adding daily shelving to our already busy schedules, but it does mean we should make sure all of our staff spend at least a couple of hours a week shelf reading or shelving. I have empty shelves of books and wiped them down with paper towels and cleaner many times. More memorably, I did a survey of the entire SF and Fantasy section, including weeding, shelf reading, and cleaning the shelves while 8.5 months pregnant. I can tell you I am a better librarian for it; possessing a more intimate knowledge of our collection and its strengths and weakness.

Too many librarians stay behind their desks all of the time. They do not get out, into the stacks to see what the patrons see. By just getting up and  roaming the stacks you will find people confused by signage (now you know to fix that signage), lost patrons looking for help (a great opportunity to start the RA interview), and dusty, messy, or over stuffed shelves (these need immediate attention.)

Once when I was helping out with the shelving, I came upon an area so tight that it needed immediate weeding and a huge shift. How long had this been going on? How many patrons were unable to remove a book they wanted and were too embarrassed to ask for help? I don't know, but myself and my then department head Briana spent a few days fixing that section. This led to a collection wide inventory, weeding, and shifting project which is still going on and has made our collection much neater and more relevant to our patrons' needs.

I haven't even begun to mention all you can learn yourself by roaming the shelves. When shelving I have come upon lost treasures: books that I had meant to read years before, books with interesting covers or titles that demand a second look, or classics in need of replacements. In each of these instances I have brought the books back to my desk and spent some time with them. Some times I will check them out or add them to my to-read list, but more often than not, I end up passing them on to a patron to enjoy. A book they would have never found if I hadn't of gotten up and moved myself into the stacks.

Now get off your butt and get into the stacks! Shelve some books, shelf read a few stacks, or clean some shelves. If I could do it 8.5 months pregnant, what's stopping you? Any of these duties will improve your skills as a librarian and, more importantly, they will greatly improve you patrons' library experience. And, isn't that why we work in public libraries in the first place?

RA for All: Call to Action-- Get Off Your Butt Rant

This Call to Action series may be new, but the Becky "rant post" is not.  One of my earliest, posts of this type was way back in March of 2010. Affectionately dubbed the “Get off your butt rant” by Rebecca Vnuk, this post discusses why every library worker need to get into the stacks, no matter what your “level” is.

Now I know at some libraries, like Chicago Public Library for example, union rules prohibit anyone but shelvers from physically putting books away, but everyone can find a reason to get up and wander the stacks. So don’t use that as an excuse when you read this post below.

Going back an re-reading this entire post was also a nice reminder to me that my core values about public service have not changed over time.  The final lines of this post, "Any of these duties will improve your skills as a librarian and, more importantly, they will greatly improve you patrons' library experience. And, isn't that why we work in public libraries in the first place?” echo the words I still write regularly 6 years later.

Here is the link to the original post, but it is also reposted below so that it can officially come part of the Call to Action archive.

And after you read it, please get off your butt and get into the stacks.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2010

Keeping the Shelves In Order

 

Every other week I volunteer at my daughter's elementary school library. Although I am often consulted on larger issues pertaining to the library's collection and do provide quite a bit of RA to the students, I am mostly there to help shelve the books.

Also, this week at the BPL, our page injured herself and I spent a large part of my shift shelving books.

Now, many librarians would say that using a professional librarian to shelve books over other more "worthy" duties is a poor use of the librarian's skills and expertise. I am here to tell you today that those people are flat out wrong.

First and foremost, neat, clean, and ordered book shelves are THEmost important service you can provide for you patrons. Think about it, if a patron comes in looking for a book, checks the catalog, and goes to the exact place where the book is supposed to be and cannot find it, how do you think they are going to feel about the service you are providing?

Many librarians think it is beneath them to keep the shelves in order. I would argue that as the professionals, we should be responsible for keeping them in order. If that means getting in there and shelf reading (which means you go through a section, book by book, to make sure they are in the correct order) or literally shelving the books, so be it. We need to take responsibility for our collections from the selection of materials to their home on the shelves.

This does not mean we should fire all of our pages and start adding daily shelving to our already busy schedules, but it does mean we should make sure all of our staff spend at least a couple of hours a week shelf reading or shelving. I have empty shelves of books and wiped them down with paper towels and cleaner many times. More memorably, I did a survey of the entire SF and Fantasy section, including weeding, shelf reading, and cleaning the shelves while 8.5 months pregnant. I can tell you I am a better librarian for it; possessing a more intimate knowledge of our collection and its strengths and weakness.

Too many librarians stay behind their desks all of the time. They do not get out, into the stacks to see what the patrons see. By just getting up and  roaming the stacks you will find people confused by signage (now you know to fix that signage), lost patrons looking for help (a great opportunity to start the RA interview), and dusty, messy, or over stuffed shelves (these need immediate attention.)

Once when I was helping out with the shelving, I came upon an area so tight that it needed immediate weeding and a huge shift. How long had this been going on? How many patrons were unable to remove a book they wanted and were too embarrassed to ask for help? I don't know, but myself and my then department head Briana spent a few days fixing that section. This led to a collection wide inventory, weeding, and shifting project which is still going on and has made our collection much neater and more relevant to our patrons' needs.

I haven't even begun to mention all you can learn yourself by roaming the shelves. When shelving I have come upon lost treasures: books that I had meant to read years before, books with interesting covers or titles that demand a second look, or classics in need of replacements. In each of these instances I have brought the books back to my desk and spent some time with them. Some times I will check them out or add them to my to-read list, but more often than not, I end up passing them on to a patron to enjoy. A book they would have never found if I hadn't of gotten up and moved myself into the stacks.

Now get off your butt and get into the stacks! Shelve some books, shelf read a few stacks, or clean some shelves. If I could do it 8.5 months pregnant, what's stopping you? Any of these duties will improve your skills as a librarian and, more importantly, they will greatly improve you patrons' library experience. And, isn't that why we work in public libraries in the first place?

ARRT Program on eBook RA and Collection Development

On Tuesday afternoon I headed out to the 95th Street Branch of the Naperville Public Library to attend the ARRT Spring Program entitled, "eBook Readers' Advisory and Collection Development."

The presenters were Jessica Moyer Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Bleue Benton Collection Development Manager, Oak Park Public Library.  The talk was broken into 2 parts.

 1. Who is the eReader?

Jessica went first and set the stage by focusing her talk on the break down of the rich data collected by the Pew Internet and America Life survey that focused on the rise of eReading.  You can click here for the report's summary which also has links to the full report.

The highlights very briefly (in bullets) with my added comments (indented below the bullets) are:

• People are reading more in general because of eBooks.  72% of American adults read a printed book last year.  21% read an eBook, but of the 72% if adults who read, 29% read an eBook too.  To flip it further, 88% of those eBook readers also read a printed book
• Yeah! eBooks are increasing people's reading numbers overall.  Five years ago we were seeing numbers in the 20 percents of adults who had read a book in a given year.  And eBook readers don't only read eBooks.  This is also good news. 
• The increase in people reading an eBook on a typical day since 2010 is 4 fold.
• These big increases are because we were at 0 a few years ago, so this growth is not surprising.  At some point, however, it will level off like all new formats do.
• The vast majority of eReaders are between 18-49 with almost another 1/4 in the 50-64 range. But all of them prefer to buy their eBooks rather than borrow them.
• We are seeing that 50-64 range coming into the library for help, but the 18-49 are either doing it from home or just by-passing the library altogether. Not good for us.
• It is too difficult to download from the library (lots of steps) and the demand is so high, there really is nothing available immediately.  Since eBook readers also seem to be more affluent, they don't mind buying their books.  But they are reading on average 2 a month, so eventually it will get too expensive.
• eBook readers read for all sorts of reasons: pleasure, information, current events (especially magazines) and work or school.
• This made me think for the first time how key it is going to be to move our magazine subscriptions to a electronic model.  I love my New Yorker and InStyle on the iPad; I don't know why I never thought of it for the library.  Maybe because I am not a big magazine borrower.
• The mass market paperback is the format being made obsolete by eBooks
• Jessica pointed out that the mass market paperback is not very old as a format anyway.  The hard cover is not going anywhere though and that really is the library's main print book format.
• People who read eBooks get their suggestions for what to read next from everywhere but the library.
• We need to be more relevant here.

Again, this is a very brief overview of her overview.  The full report is here and I highly suggest you take a look at it.

In terms of Jessica's RA suggestions when it comes to eBook readers, she reminded us that eBooks are simply another format.  We need to be format neutral and remind patrons that we can help them find their next good read no matter the format.  We need to start advertising that we offer eBooks more and can provide the same services for eReaders as we do for print readers.

She pointed out that many people bring their eReaders into the library to use our wireless to download books they are purchasing.  Even if they are going to buy the books and not borrow them from us, we can still help them to pick a book based on their reading tastes.  We need to remind them of how much they need us.

2. eBook Collection Development

This data set the stage very well for Bleue who focused on the collection development issues of eBooks.  This is the area where I think we all need the most guidance.

She began by explaining the ever changing issues about which publishers are allowing their books to even be checked out at libraries.  Of the Big 6, 2 don't allow it right now, and the others have serious restrictions, but this is an ever changing issue.  Bleue explained why it is so difficult for the publishers and the libraries to work out a fair model.  I appreciated how she explained the issue from all sides.  It is very complicated, but the short answer is, everyone needs to keep working through the issues together and soon it will all be resolved.  We are talking about huge changes in pricing and delivery models.  The publishers still need to make money or they will no longer produce any books.

In terms of specific collection development, Bleue had many good points and suggestions.  Again, the highlights are below:

• We are so busy trying to keep up with demand on new titles, that we are forgetting to build depth in our e-collections. The mid list is especially underrepresented, and this is an area where libraries excel in print.
• Currently, there is NO weeding going on with eBooks.  This is because there is currently no way libraries can weed in OverDrive, but also, since most of the buying is through consortia, weeding needs to be done collectively.
• Because weeding is impossible right now, Bleue reminded us that we should be careful about buying eBooks like law and medical titles which do need to be weeded frequently.
• An issue I never even thought of--- some day we will be able to weed eBooks, but think about when we weed print books now.  We can resell them in our Friends used book sales.  We get a good deal of revenue from these sales (at Berwyn we get about $300 a month).  With eBooks, you simply delete them from a virtual place and they are gone forever.
• Since consortia are the most popular sharing model right now, there needs to be better pricing models which place a larger burden on the bigger users.  In Oak Park's consortia (which Berwyn is a part of) they are the biggest user (in the thousands) while the smallest user had less than 10 downloads.
• She ended with a few purchasing suggestions for building better collections.
• When buying, keep your orders small.  Don't go crazy buying too many titles at once.  Take the time to see how the titles you are buying are going over with patrons before adding more.
• When you have time, consider adding the back list titles of popular authors.  This will build your back list.
• Use a hold management system to automatically add titles when demand necessitates it.
• Buy lots of inexpensive titles to get your quantity up.  Everything they put on sale that your patrons would read should be bought.  Specifically, she mentioned that romance titles are very popular and a good value for the money.
• Don't forget that short genres do very well in the "e" format: poems, essays, and short stories.  They actually do better in "e" than print.
• Try to think of your "e" collections as a part of your entire collection and don't buy just by format.  In other words, consider the authors and titles you are adding to your collections on their own merit and then buy in all the formats you want for your patrons.

This last point was the most useful thing I learned at the workshop.  I am guilty of this problem.  We get so wrapped up in the new formats that we forget to consider the whole picture of our collection.  Our collections need to be consider as their own beast, regardless of format.  The same people selecting fiction should be selecting it for print, audio, and eBooks.  Too often this does not happen (it doesn't happen at Berwyn).  I think with the increase in popularity of eBooks, now is the time to remind our selves of this important point.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So that's my report with comments.  It is not everything, but the points I thought were most pertinent to a large audience.

Please remember to go back to the full Pew report.

Also, No Shelf Required is still the best place to stay on top of "e" news.

RA and Collection Development

With the semester having begun last night, my thoughts have moved from the day-to-day assistance of patrons to the larger RA issues.

There are 2 big concepts that I go out of my way to teach the LIS 763 students that I know they often do not get in any other class: Collection Development and Marketing.  Right now I will focus on the CD (Marketing will come a bit later in the semester).

Collection Development is the professional process by which we librarians decide which books to acquire for our collections and which books we want to delete.  For more on the deletion part, called weeding, click here to see my weeding rant.

But the other component of CD is how we decided what we will purchase for our libraries.  Back in the 1980s there was a huge shift in CD philosophy beginning with Nora Rawlinson's influential 1981 article, "Give 'Em What They Want," which is still read in many library schools today.

Before this article, libraries focused on stocking the books people should be reading.  Rowlinson upset a lot of people by saying no, public libraries are for the people, we should have what they want to read and lots of copies.

RA service was a logical outcome of this mentality.  The idea that we should help leisure readers find what they want without passing judgment on their reading tastes or trying to "graduate" them to something "higher," stems from Rowlinson's article.

Booklist Online has an electronic newsletter which goes out a few times a year (no subscription necessary) called The Corner Shelf.  It is a newsletter that fills the space, "Where Readers' Advisory meets Collection Development."

The most recent issue has this great conversation with three former heads of Collection Development at the Chicago Public Library in which they discuss Rowlinson's legacy and the similarities and differences between RA and CD.  I suggest that anyone who buys books for their library or helps readers take a look at this conversation.  It is full of history, current issues, and a look into the future.  They have a larger discussion on Rowlinson and her legacy too.