In which she gains loot

[zeborah]

So we're doing a lot of deaccessioning at the library at the moment. "Deaccessioning" is the polite euphemism for "weeding" that we use in the hope that it won't cause the general public to go "Oh noes, the librarians are throwing out books, civilisation is falling!"

(If anyone is tempted to express such sentiments here, all I can say is: you haven't *seen* the books we're weeding. Or the colour of my hands after I've spent half an hour with them. (Some people from another branch came to weed one section and complained about all the dust. In private we mocked them mercilessly, because that's the section we *vacuumed* a year ago.) We use other criteria than the dust index, but actually the dust index is a pretty good gauge. --The mould-on-the-front-cover index is even better.)

Anyway, when I came back from holiday there was a gigantic pile of books on the bench waiting to be sorted into an "Attempt to sell for $2" pile and a "Throw it straight into the recycling bin and stand back before the mushroom cloud of dust gets you" pile.

(Seriously, don't even start with the outrage. You haven't *seen* this junk. Reprints of journal articles no-one cares about and if they did they wouldn't search for a reprint, in courier, single-sided on yellowed paper, quarter-flushed in cardboard which has warped with age so that the dust has had plenty of space to settle on.... And the ringbound workshop notes from 1973. And the damned plastic spiral binding that snaps at your fingers when you try to pull it off so the paper can be recycled; there's a knack to getting it off without injury, but it doesn't work if the plastic's old enough to be decomposing into shards. And the damned metal spiral binding which won't come off at all unless you tear the pages off a few at a time -- although then you can make things with the wire. I made a cute bookworm yesterday when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed.)

So anyway, yesterday and today, among other tasks, I sorted through the pile. And today among that pile I found a Swedish/English and a Norwegian/English dictionary. And now the dictionaries are in my living room, along with the Danish/English dictionary which technically still belongs to the library but in practice has been in my possession for three years.

(They're still in a plastic bag: I haven't vacuumed them yet.)

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Both my mother and my sister were librarians. You don't have to tell us about moldy dusty books that haven't left their appointed shelves in generations . . .

On the other hand, I *did* take out a book last year that hadn't circulated for so long the librarian couldn't find it in their catalog system.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

heh. that's always a bit amusing when that happens. Although, at my library, when that happens it's usually not that it was just sitting on the shelves for that long. It's more likely that we mishelved it, went looking for it, couldn't find it, and marked it missing. After a while, those items are dropped from the system.

[zeborah]

Admittedly yesterday I was putting a pile of books, which librarians for another branch had selected for weeding, through the weeding program on the computer. And the computer said "That's not 'in library' so you can't weed it." So I looked it up and it said it had been marked as missing, and moreover someone had requested it....

So that's not going to be weeded any more.

But yeah, there's a few books that must have managed to be missing when we were barcoding every book in the library, because there's no barcode and no record of them anywhere. A few journals too. I like it when it happens with journals, because journals are a blasted nuisance to weed (paperwork ugh) and when this happens we don't need to do anything, just bin them.

[painoarvokas.livejournal.com]

What sort of paperwork? If it can be told, of course.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I recall doing discards. It was filthy, dusty work and some books just had that smell to them - and then there were those little white things that started off looking like a speck of nothing and then moved, dammit! Yech! The first time I did discards I could hardly bear to throw out even the really manky books, but I soon got really good at it. (And this was in the days before recycling and before libraries used to sell off their discards so they were all destined for the trash.) Books are great, but when they're done, they're done - unless they're the last copy of something important, in which case have them rebound, or collectible rarities, in which case they should have been in a better storage facility all along.

[zeborah]

I prefer not to smell them.... Haven't seen moving white things, but we do have the occasional moving grey things (silverfish <stomp>)

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

I am most definitely NOT outraged. I wouldn't even be outraged if they weren't moldy.

Space is not infinite. Information, however, often feels as though it is a times. One needs to make decisions as to what will go on the shelves and what won't. Getting rid of old books makes room for the new.

Also, before I did weeding, I did strips at the bookstore. Brand new paperbacks: rip off the covers, send the convers back, toss the rest of the book away. Weeding is positively upbeat by comparison. (We did eventually go to recycling. which was kinda sad because that also stopped the practice of us being able to take a couple of strips home a month.)

[zeborah]

The mitigating factor with strips is that you know there's hundreds/thousands of other copies out there; with library discards there's that nagging feeling that someone might *need* this table of chemical data which is probably either out of date or on the internet or both, and then they'll have to interloan it, maybe from overseas!

--But if my MLIS studies had any effect on me, it was to indoctrinate me in the creed of weeding. They gave us twelve reasons why weeding is good for the collection, and they didn't even mention that it's fun!

[painoarvokas.livejournal.com]

I can guess some of the reasons, but would you list them, please? For the edification of us non-librarians?

[zeborah]

At one point I had a mnemonic and could list all twelve by heart, but that was fairly pointless and so after a while it left my memory. Googling on Slote (the general authority on weeding) I find his book mentions that Loriene Roy (another library authority) has listed 27 reasons; Slote bundles them up a bit more tidily here.

But some reasons I can think of:

* saves shelf space. Shelf space is expensive so you want it for new books and/or for computers to access new electronic resources.

* saves staff time. The more books on the shelf, the longer it takes (exponentially) to keep tidy and in order.

* saves user time. The more books on the shelf, the longer it takes to find the book you're looking for.
- Especially if they've been accidentally or intentionally mis-shelved.
- Also, when books are crammed together on a shelf, it's harder to pull out the one you want.

* is better for the books. The more books crammed together on a shelf, the quicker their covers will get scuffed and dog-eared and torn. So also saves money on repairs.
- Also books are more likely to get shoved to the back of the bookshelf and fall down among the dust bunnies, old pens, and ickier things, and not be seen again for days/weeks/months.

* less dust = healthier for everyone involved.

* increases circulation. The newer and prettier the collection looks, the more books (and we're talking absolute terms) will be borrowed. If a higher proportion is dusty and dull and torn, more people will simply not even look at the shelf.

* looks nicer. This makes the building a nicer place to work in and a nicer place to visit; users are more likely to spend longer, come back often, and recommend it to others.

* if you're going to be doing any significant moving (as we are) or any technological upgrade (eg adding barcodes or RFID) then the more books you can weed before you do that, the less work you'll have to do during the move/upgrade. (With the upgrade, you'll save ridiculous amounts of money, too.)