What is Weeding and Why Is It Important for a Useful Community Library?
As many of you know we had our annual Friends of the Library Book Sale in conjunction with Griswold Reunion. Thanks to many donations and a thorough job of weeding (the sorting and pulling of books) we had a great selection of books for you to choose from and purchase. Friends of the Library use the proceeds to purchase necessary new items for the library that may be limited by the current budget. This may include books, computers, software, furniture, etc. The Friends are a group of hardworking individuals who believe that the community library is vital to Griswold. Friends are still in the organization phase and will be recruiting new members soon and welcome all your support.
Just to explain a little bit about the Griswold Library's weeding policy so that you know this is a carefully thought out process and not just a fancy name for throwing away books and slowing down a library's growth. The library uses a method called CREW to weed books and other materials from the library's collection. CREW is part of the cycle of library service and stands for Continuous Review, Evaluation, and Weeding. The cycle of direct and indirect library services resembles a circle because one process leads to the next. The whole cycle is called "collection building"---a series of ongoing routines that continuously adds to, removes from, interprets, and adjusts the collection to fit the needs of its users and potential users. We start with the selection-reviews and requests-and the acquisition-ordering and paying for-of the library's materials. Then we move on to the cataloging and processing that includes data entry, stamping, bar coding, labeling, and applying protective jackets to the same materials. Circulation and reference is the next step, in which the prepared books are placed out on the shelves being used in the public services. Then the process starts over again.
The method called CREW integrates all the processes into one smooth, streamlined, and ongoing routine that assures that all necessary indirect services are accomplished in an effective way. When the librarian discovers that the material's useful career is over, it is retired by "weeding", all the while generating information on the current strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and saturation points of the collection that is used for another round of selection and acquisition. The determination is based on shelf-time (not checked out for 6 years or more), condition and appearance of the material, relevancy for community users, inaccurate or false information, unused sets of books, repetitious series, unneeded duplicates, and whether the information is outdated or obsolete as in the case of health and medical, law, technology, geography, travel, transportation, and scientific information.
There are six major benefits of weeding and they include: saving space-no longer costing money for cleaning, binding, mending, shelving, cataloging/database space and all the other hidden costs of maintenance; saving time of patrons and staff-crowded shelves full of ragged books with illegible markings cost time and are unappealing to readers; making the collection more appealing-new books increase circulation, that is a fact; the library's reputation is enhanced for reliability, up-to-dateness, and building public trust; providing a continuous check on the need for mending, lost books, and volume count; and finally, CREW provides constant feedback on the collections strengths and weaknesses alerting the librarian for future planning and direction.
This is a complicated process in a nutshell and probably more than you wanted to know on the subject. However, it is important for you to know that the library is trying very hard to make the
Griswold Library a valued and useful property for everyone. If you have questions or comments, please be sure to address them to the librarian or the library board.
