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).

Slow and steady

Holly Hibner, adult services coordinator at the Plymouth District Library, MI, and coauthor of the blog Awful Library Books, recommends thinking about weeding as a normal part of collection management rather than waiting to do it all at once. Taking a few minutes every day to look through the collection and pull titles that don’t belong anymore can save library staff from having to undertake a major project.

“There’s no reason to load up a cart with hundreds of items once a year when you can pull a few things here and there all year round,” says Hibner.

Not letting weeding turn into a large effort can help prevent a lot of the headaches associated with it, says librarian Mary Kelly, who coauthored with Hibner the textbook Making a Collection Count: A Holistic Approach to Library Collection Management (Chandos). Major weeding programs can cause anxiety and misunderstanding among library staffers and community members alike.

Examples of libraries throwing out thousands of titles in one fell swoop, and losing a lot of public goodwill right along with those titles, are not hard to find. In the UK, the destruction of nearly a quarter of a million old, damaged, or irrelevant titles during the renovation of the Manchester Central Library was described by opponents as “morally reprehensible,” according to an article in the Guardian last February.

Dumpster dismay

Also in February, Alameda County Library (ACL) in northern California came under fire when thousands of titles turned up in the dumpsters of its Fremont branch. “My stomach went into a knot,” Fremont resident Dorothea Dorenz told a local CBS affiliate. After several months of negative publicity, the ACL Advisory Committee agreed to work with Discover Books, a for-profit company that will sell the weeded books through eBay and Amazon, with a portion of the sales going to the ACL Foundation.

Maybe the biggest shame of these controversies is that folks like Dorenz—who belongs to a group named Library Book Savers of Alameda County—have the best of intentions and the library’s interests at heart. These advocate groups should be natural allies, but miscommunication can turn them into enemies. In Hennepin County, MN, the whistle-blower was an anonymous library employee who went to the press, telling KMSP-TV that “hundreds of thousands of perfectly good books” were being thrown into the library’s recycling bins.

“Even if all the weeded books meet the weeding criteria, the sheer volume can get people worked up,” says Hibner. “Large-scale weeding is what gets libraries into trouble and [is] where mistakes can happen. Going slowly and carefully is better for the collection and better for users.”

Hibner says it can be helpful to keep a couple of noncontroversial titles on hand to illustrate why collections need pruning. “Hold up a copy of How To Get More Fun Out of Smoking (Ram, 1941),” she recommends, “and say, ‘This is why we weed.’ ”

A SMOKING GUN Keep examples of outdated titles on hand to ­explain the need to weed

Necessary sacrifices

All the same, sometimes a huge cull of titles is necessary. At the University of Missouri, library director Jim Cogswell oversaw the destruction of nearly 190,000 titles from the collection after they had been damaged by mold in 2013 and were no longer fit for circulation. Even though more than twice as many titles were saved by cleaning since the problem was discovered, a faculty committee described the destruction of the damaged titles as an “egregious violation” of trust between the library and faculty members.

“We should have done better in saying that the only books that were going to be destroyed were duplicates,” Cogswell told local paper Lee’s Summit Journal. “But I make no apologies for the outcome.”

Renovations or moves to a new location, or simply a change of policy can also trigger larger deaccession projects.

When a lot of titles need to be weeded at once, communication is key. Being transparent about the decisions being made and the thought process behind them—and getting ahead of the story—can help prevent a library’s otherwise supportive public from becoming upset when a number of books need to go.

Even in the course of regular weeding, transparency and openness are important, says Mindy Reed, managing librarian at Recycled Reads in Austin, TX, and a 2015 LJ Mover & Shaker. Recycled Reads operates a retail space that sells and recycles books discarded from the Austin Public Library’s 23 branches, upward of 60,000 books every month.

“We’re totally transparent. If someone wants to come in the back to use the restroom, they will see us sorting books,” says Reed. More formal tours are available, too, of course, as a way of opening the process and winning trust in the community.

“We’ve built credibility, but that takes time,” Reed says. “It can’t be just a matter of ‘Trust me, I know what I’m doing, don’t look in that bin.’ ”

Weeding by numbers

What makes a book a good candidate for weeding? How much use a book sees is obviously a major factor. Running an integrated library system (ILS) usage report can return an objective list of titles that can safely be culled to make space in the stacks for new blood. For those whose libraries subscribe, specific collection analytics software, such as Baker & Taylor’s Collection HQ, DecisionCenter by Innovative Interfaces, and on the academic side Intota Assessment can take the library’s data and turn it into user-friendly weeding and branch distribution reports.

However, even the most accurate algorithm’s list can benefit from a double check from a trained librarian’s eye, as certain titles (classics, local interest, backlist for authors about to release a new title after a long hiatus) may be worth keeping on the shelves in spite of low-traffic track records—especially if yours is the only library in your consortium or interlibrary loan pool to retain a copy.

Spending time in the stacks with the titles is a must. It’s also a great way to get, and stay, familiar with the collection—good, bad, and ugly. Making a habit of roaming regularly will make sure a librarian always has a feel for what’s on the shelves.
“You can’t make weeding decisions based solely off of paper. Things circulate that shouldn’t. Things don’t circulate that should,” Hibner says. “Old things should be considered on an individual basis, not weeded simply because they are old.”

Aging out

Age is a factor to consider in weeding, though. That’s especially true for subjects in which staying current is important, such as law, medicine, or technology. When patrons see titles on how to make the most of Windows XP, they may question the reliability not only of that book but the institution that loans it. Out-of-date works can be worse than simply embarrassing, however. They can keep information that’s been proven incorrect, or even harmful, in circulation.

Jennifer LaGarde, educator on loan for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and a 2012 LJ Mover & Shaker, recalls a title she came across while thinning out a reference section during her first year as a school librarian. The book stated confidently that “scientists do not believe HIV is transmitted through sexual content.”

“I ended up giving that book to a science teacher who wanted to use it as a tool when discussing the learning curve associated with contagious diseases. In that situation, that book was an awesome resource,” LaGarde wrote on her blog. “But on a library shelf, it’s like a loaded gun. That kind of misinformation can do serious harm.”

Condition matters as well. Even if a title is relatively new, if it’s a hot read that is showing signs of its heavy use, it could be time to take a book out of circulation—and order a replacement copy.

Not every library will need the same kind of weeding. For instance, in school libraries, out-of-date materials can be even more of a problem for students who need the most current information as they prepare for reports, papers, and tests. Academic libraries and special collections such as film and music archives will also need weeding attention, though the criteria may be different.

In a university setting, for instance, physical archives of journals and other publications that students have access to online may be taking up space that could be used more effectively. “Stacks and stacks of bound periodicals generally do not make sense anymore [for] the off chance a student might browse the section,” Carroll University, Waukesha, WI, reference and instruction librarian Joe Hardenbrook wrote on his blog, Mr. Library Dude. Duplicate print material, he says, “can’t compete—nor should it—with 24/7 perpetual access to resources such as JSTOR—available from the library website from anywhere in the world.” On the other hand, history students may need access to out-of-date material for the insight it brings to the mind-set current at the time it was published.

BOOK ART Weeded titles can see a second life as crafting raw materials for programs
and as fundraising options during sales events

Where to?

Once weeded titles are off of the shelves, the question remains: What we do with them? Tossing books into dumpsters can rile up the public and cause ill will among patrons and civic leaders, as discussed above. Friends of the Library groups can be a great resource, stepping up to run that tried-and-true event, the library book sale.

“A friend calls weeding ‘selecting for the book sale,’ and I think that’s one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard,” says Hibner. “It’s a positive message.”

Other services, such as online bookseller Better World Books, will buy loads of titles in bulk and sell them on commission. Titles that don’t sell are an opportunity to get creative as well, as books can be upcycled into creative furniture or works of art for your branch, as well as raw materials for book art crafting programs. That’s something that Reed, her staff, and volunteers at Recycled Reads are becoming proficient at out of necessity.

“When I first got this opportunity, I had this idea of a bookstore like Meg Ryan’s in [the movie] You’ve Got Mail,” she recalls, a cute little space filled with great books and knowledgeable staff helping people find the titles they love. “Then [we] started getting dropoffs [donations], and it became very clear very quickly that if we couldn’t do something with the books we couldn’t sell, we weren’t going to last more than a few months.”

The retail space just celebrated its sixth anniversary, and while many titles that can’t be saved are recycled into pulp, others get a new lease on life as artwork. From used book piñatas to crafty collaborations with Austin’s Maker community, the Recycled Reads crew are always looking for ways to repurpose titles they can’t sell. Lately, they have been experimenting with a growing business turning discarded books into custom-designed table centerpieces for corporate dinners, charity lunches, and similar events—they’re even considering branching out into wedding decor in the near future.

Digital discards

Even items that don’t take up physical space still need weeding attention. When readers browse ebook collections, they don’t want to have to sift through titles that no one checks out. After the hype around a newly released title fades, a library can stop paying for multiple digital copies as demand trails off.

“Materials can get lost in a vast digital collection just as they can in a large library. Easy accessibility in the key,” says Ashley Eklof, head librarian at Bibliotech, San Antonio’s bookless, all- digital public library. “This is why I weed—it’s certainly not because of lack of space.”

Eklof reports that the process of weeding an all-digital collection is different. When the license on a title expires, Eklof reviews the usage it has seen over the two years Bibliotech has been open—or in the case of a title that expired after reaching a download threshold, how long it took to hit that mark. Then she analyzes how many copies of the title she purchased initially and either downsizes the number of copies or weeds it altogether. (In an academic setting, where the rising price of journals is claiming an increasing share of library budgets, cost per circulation is an essential weeding metric, along with impact factor and a variety of alternative considerations.)

Of course, there are a few titles that will always have a place on Eklof’s shelves. “Classics, for example, are often a one-time purchase,” says Eklof, citing books by Dickens, Steinbeck, and Austen as examples. “It is great to have this core collection of materials that I don’t have to worry about…expiring.”

Collection DNR

Since perpetual licenses can be pricey, Eklof and her staff have to be judicious in forming the core of the collection. And that judiciousness, says Mindy Reed, is a lesson all libraries can take to the bank. After all, weeding can be a much easier task if it’s a consideration in the collection management process from the day a book arrives. When ordering material, having an end-of-life plan for it is essential, especially for content like encyclopedia sets and other reference titles that take up lots of shelf space—and, in the age of digital databases, may be out of date by the time they arrive.

For Reed, success at Recycled Reads will be marked by having fewer and fewer titles come through the shelves. “That’s how we’ll know we’ve really thought through how we’re managing a collection through its whole life cycle,” she says.