Weed any good books lately?

Some of you may have heard library staff talking about doing weeding. While there are some keen gardeners on the staff, when librarians talk about weeding they are possibly talking about culling the collection. Weeding is a term we use for going through the books on the shelves and removing those that for various reasons we no longer wish to keep. Weeding may be a slightly misleading term as while plant weeds are generally not wanted, this may not be true of the weeded books. perhaps weeding is the term we use as it's generally not considered a fun activity.
The main reason we have to weed the collection is to make space for all the new books that keep getting published. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) keeps records of the number of books published by each country as an indicator of the standard of living, education, and a country's self-awareness. From their records it is estimated that over 500,000 new titles are being published each year. That's over 1,300 each day, and this figure doesn't even include the many memoirs, books on local history, course books etc. that have been self-published.

Fortunately we don't have to try to house all of these, but the number of new books we do have to accommodate is still considerable at around 6,000 a year, so we continually have to make space. The planned expansion of the library building may ease the need to weed to some degree, but it will still need to take place. Weeding not only makes more space, it also ensures the collection is kept fresh and that the books on the shelves are both useful and used.

There are several criteria used in deciding which books to weed. Books that are in poor condition are obvious targets as they become less and less desirable for borrowers to take out. I think we are all guilty at some time of 'judging a book by its cover', but this is perhaps more forgivable if the cover is falling off. If a book is in a sad state of repair but still popular we will make an effort to source a replacement copy, although this can be difficult, particularly with older titles. Lately we have enjoyed some success finding books on the on-line auction site Trade Me.

Another criteria for deselection is if the information in a book is out of date. With many books the currency of information is not that important and indeed it can be quite valuable to look back and see what was thought about a subject in the past. Other books however have a more limited life span when the information they contain becomes inaccurate. Books about computers or medicine for example, where the technology is developing rapidly, can quickly become out of date. Books on subjects like geography where borders and the names of countries can change almost overnight also need to be kept up to date. We wouldn't want you to embark on an overseas trip to a destination you read about in one of our books, only to discover the country no longer exists.

Demand is a very big factor in determining if we need to keep a book. Certain books enjoy huge popularity such as The DaVinci Code, the Twilight series, or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. To satisfy this demand we will buy multiple copies so that borrowers don't have to wait to long to get their hands on a copy. When this demand dies off there may no longer be a need to keep more than one copy and so we can withdraw the additional ones. Currently we have between three and four copies of each of the books in the Twilight series. At the time of writing all but one of these is either on-loan or waiting to be picked up, but eventually this demand will ease and we will be able to withdraw some copies.

Sadly there are also those books that for whatever reason fall out of favour, or even more unfortunately never enjoy much popularity. Using our catalogue records we can determine how often a book has been issued and when it was last issued, and we use this information when deciding what to weed. It can be disappointing to withdraw these books, but the reality is that as a public library it is our responsibility to make sure that we are providing books the public wants.

Fortunately we do not need to discard all the books we weed from the main collection and some can be moved to the 'Stack' which is housed in the library's basement. We do this particularly for older classics that we know are going to be wanted again in the future, for books in a series, and books by authors we know have a loyal following. The Stack books can be borrowed the same as any from the general collection so if you can't find the book that your looking for on the shelf, please ask at the Issue Desk as we may have a copy in the basement.

If a book is not being issued, and there is no justification for retaining a Stack copy, then it is just taking up space and will be withdrawn. These books are made available for members of the public to purchase through our regular book sales and are priced very affordably. Our book sale is essentially on-going but we make a particular effort to make withdrawn books available during the school holidays, so this is a good time to look for a bargain. The books available will be from all parts of the library including fiction, non-fiction, children's and large print. We also sell bundles of older magazines we no longer have space for.

Weeding can be a fraught process for librarians and we need to adopt a stoic heart when undertaking it. It is difficult not to develop a loyalty to certain books because of the author or the the subject matter, but unfortunately just because we think a book should be being read, doesn't mean it will be, and we need to keep making space for the new nooks. Weeding keeps the collection fresh and relevant and while it can be depressing to chuck books out, weeding is a necessary procedure for maintaining a library where the books in the collection are regularly being used, and that's what we want too see most of all.

Jon Adams
Community Outreach Librarian
Masterton District Library