And, no, it's not creating next year's budget! (Although anticipating needs and activities during a pandemic has made that a challenge in recent years.)
It's WEEDING time! Just as I disliked weeding my garden since the weeds would grow so quickly, weeding the library is time consuming but necessary.
What is weeding in a library? It's finding old, worn-out, out-dated, or unread books that are taking up room on the shelves and removing them from the collection. "What?" You might ask. "REMOVE library books?"
Yes! First, the "How to Use Your iPod" manual from the 1990s is not only completely irrelevant, but when students say it, they asked, "What's an iPod?" That this was an EARLY version of the iPod (no apps) that only played music boggled their minds. Out-dated books like that must leave the shelves and be replaced with up-to-date information. This also applied to a large number of economics and business books that had graphs and figures from the year 2000, and failed to mention the use of social media at all in marketing. Definitely irrelevant for today.
Then comes the "last checked out in 2011" books. Despite displays or other means of drawing attention to books, some books just don't spark the interest in library visitors at all. This means they take up some of the finite shelf space. (No, we can not magically increase the number of shelves to fit the number of books, unfortunately. If I find a way to do this...) These books, although not irrelevant, are removed as well. Some of these we were able to move to the Junior Library because they are topics of interest to those students.
But what do we do with all of these books? Books in poor condition or factually incorrect are recycled. Some are used in projects with the art department while others are sent to a recycling facility. The books in great condition that are simply not read by our students and staff are donated to schools that are in need of books. One such school had their library destroyed in a fire so we know the books will be valued.
So, why do I dislike weeding so much? Well, it is sad to see books go, even though we will be updating and replacing them. Piles of books that are new and being added to the library are exciting! Piles of books being recycled? Not so much. Also, sometimes it is depressing to see the waste. To have a stack of books purchased 20 years ago and to realize they were NEVER checked out? Although I did not purchase them, I can't help but wonder if there was a different book that should have been purchased and would have been well-read. Another reason for this being my least favorite librarian task is the time it takes to run reports, pull the books, sort the books (which is a one-by-one task), box the books and then send them off to their next destination. I dislike the clutter of boxes of books during this process.
