Ian Chant writes: Getting rid of books can feel uncomfortable and look bad to community members, but careful weeding is key to the health of a collection.
There’s an uncomfortable truth about library stacks that most librarians know but many don’t like to admit: those shelves hold a lot of junk that has to make way for the new titles getting published every day. Considering the volume of material libraries deal with, and the span of time over which those titles have been acquired, it’s not surprising.
Pulling that chaff from the collection can be time-consuming for librarians with no dearth of other projects needing their attention. Also, weeding—removing items from the collection—can seem counterintuitive. It’s by and large a thankless task as well. Patrons don’t walk in saying, “Thanks for getting rid of all of those books!” Some may even drag library staff over the coals, furious about what looks, to them, like useful books being destroyed or funds being wasted.
So why go to the trouble? Because in a library, just as in a garden, taking out unwanted items makes those left behind stand out. Circulation frequently rises after a weeding project, however counterintuitive that may seem: when people can browse the shelves (or the online catalog) without having to sift through older material they’re not interested in, they’re more likely to find something they are looking for—or something they didn’t know they were looking for.
Meanwhile, freeing up physical space devoted to books that never leave the stacks makes more room to buy new materials that will circulate—and sometimes cash to do so, when weeded materials are resold. As more room is devoted to shared resources other than materials, such as Maker spaces and community meeting rooms, space for collections may be contracting altogether—and that means clearing out books that don’t circulate the way they used to (and maybe a few that never did).
