I just received this link from the ARSL listserv today. It is a link to the updated (2008) CREW Manual.
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/
Weeding continues to be an "issue" at some small libraries. Keeping the library collection "fresh" and relavant is a professional responsibility! It borders on "unethical" to maintain a collection that is dangerously out-of-date and of no real use to your library customers. And, in PA that should concern you--if you don't meet your customers' needs they can drive as few as 10 miles and visit another public library to get what they need! Yes, really! And, once you "lose" them to another library--chances are they "ain't coming back"!! (Even rural and small libraries need to think QUALITY not quantity!)
Sometimes the problem is "traditional" thinking staff members; sometimes it is board members. Those days have to be over if you want to survive.
The bottom line is, WE WANT PEOPLE TO TAKE BOOKS OUT OF THE LIBRARY!
Unless your library shelves are currently empty, chances are you really need to do some serious weeding.
Here is the challenge: take a look at your circulation statistics for 2008, then do a massive weeding of your collection. Follow CREW and do it right! If you have a circulation system, run a list of all items that have not circulated in the past five years and get busy! Have this project completed by National Library Week (April 12 - 18). (A great week for a booksale!)
At the end of the year, compare your circ post-weeding with last year's figures. I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised!
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Bookstore Model
View from the Park Vista Conference Center
An online gathering place for Pennsylvania's rural & small libraries (bookmobiles, too!). rsbroundtable@myway.com
Brainstormed Ideas from you regarding this Roundtable.
- Utilize the Chapters!
- PaLA Annual Conference: session and perhaps a preconference.
- Chapters: training, recruitment for roundtable.
- Conferences: ARSL.
- Don't forget the Outreach component.
- Create a listserv for the Roundtable.
- PaLA: all types of libraries; get academics, special libraries to help us (medical, law...)
- Training Video for library boards; post on youtube.
- Board Member Education: Take a mini-trustee workshop to them.
- Addressing staffing challenges: "circuit riders", substitutes to help cover so directors can attend trainings
- Board Training: value of library staff
- PaTTAN Datacasting??
- Center for the Study of Rural Librarianship (Univ. of Eastern Carolina)
- Partnerships (ARSL)
- WebJunction
- Using new technologies for training (webinars)
- "Thinking Outside the Box"
- Training
Anna Porter Public Library
Bookstore Model
Great Smoky Mountains
View from the Park Vista Conference Center
Rural Library Moo-vers and shakers...
PA Roundtable Survey 2008
ARSL (Association of Rural & Small Libraries)
ABOS (Association of Bookmobiles and Outreach Services)
Helpful Tools for Rural Libraries
Articles
- Newsweek article: "Doughnut-Hole Country".
- Marketing the Small Library. By the State Library of Kansas, 2002.
- Rural Library Survey (ALA Task Force on Rural Libraries)
- Rural Libraries: the Heart of Our Communities
- OCLC: Small & Rural Libraries Discussion Paper
- ALA Rural Library Staff Salary Survey, 2007
- Providers for Lifelong Learning. Dr. Vavrek
3 comments:
The problem with this philosophy, is zealous book purgers , not differentiating between obsolete technical books and valid but obscure detailed research books, will pitch out semi-rare out-of-print books in good condition simply because they are not actively circulated, resulting in libraries that are only filled with the same common books you find at amazon or borders bookstore. And when someone needs to reference it, but not sign it out, they too will just leave the library for better hunting elsewhere.
I read the CREW specifications, and many of the criteria for weeding listed under "poor content" have such obvious exceptions, that the criteria is refuted. One does not throw out the libraries' only copy of Mien Kamf in original german because it is racistly biased and never read, you keep it as an example, an Archival Copy of evil, Likewise true of sexist terminology as found in William Burroughs, or the out of date dinosaur theories of the original paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Librarians are not expected to be experts in every field of trivia, But when they superficially review the CREW criteria for weeding, they are given a license to kill.
Weeding is like getting a hair cut - it's not what you cut off but what you leave behind that is important.
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