Centralized Weeding Tips and Tricks

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Centralized Weeding Tips and Tricks

• PLA 2006
• Boston

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Centralized Weeding

• Wide spectrum of definitions
• Centralized schedule
• Centralized lists
• Virtual weeding branch
• Dedicated centralized weeding team

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Why Centralized Weeding?
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Collection Philosophy

• Collection viewed as a whole
• Weeding as re-selection
• Weeding consistent with service objectives
• Collection weeded in a timely manner

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Economics

• Extends the life of the right materials
• Facilitates optimal use of staff time
• Positively impacts library funding

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Necessity

• Time constraints
• Staff time issues
• Space issues
• Floating collections

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Stumbling Blocks to Centralized Weeding
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What do they know?
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Central/Agency
Belief that one method is better than another
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Lack of Resources

• Time
• People
• Technology

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Lack of Communication

• Why we weed
• Guidelines for what, how and when
• Training

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Potential Solutions
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Staff

• Dedicated
• Trained
• Understand mission and philosophy of the library
• Understand how weeding impacts selection
• Understand the concept of floating collections

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Empowerment

• Written guidelines
• Training
• On-going training for staff who have been in the
  system a long time
• New staff orientations that include training in
  weeding

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Weeding Teams

• Teams that travel between the different branches
  and do the weeding instead of regular staff in
  that branch
• Frees up staff in the branch to do other things
• Members of this team are more likely to
  understand the weeding philosophy of your
  library

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Weeding Teams

• Communication
• Essential when using members outside of the
  branch
• Must have established and easy mechanisms in
  place to encourage communication
• Essential if teams are doing the weeding during
  hours that the library is closed, or at times
  when there is limited staff in the building

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Virtual Solutions

• ILS reports
• Reports are sent to each library from a
  centralized source
• Reports are generated by central office to cover
  all locations
• 2-year no circ reports
• Circulated over x number of times
• Used for videos, and other formats, where
  condition is harder to determine

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Virtual Solutions

• New edition weeding
• Note or code is placed in order record to
  indicate that an older edition should be weeded
• Staff processing new edition, code older edition
  to be weeded

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Virtual Solutions

• Weeding codes
• Establish a series of codes that can be used to
  identify items that should be weeded
• Portable barcode scanner
• Wireless workstations

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Future Solutions

• More customizable/useable reports
• Ratio of circulation to number of copies reports
• Distribution reports to enable staff to move
  materials to other libraries or weed
• Pop-up reminders that are customizable to your
  weeding guidelines

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All books are divisible into two classes the
books of the hour, and the books of all time.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)