weeding

Weeding is an important part of collection management but there are some people who see it as throwing away perfectly good books. My Public Library teacher even told me that it was a good idea to dispose of weeded books as discreetly as possible, least a patron see you doing it and accuse the library of wasting the tax payers hard earned dollars. Despite these perceptions weeding is critical to a library collections heath. Books that have outdated information such as old medical texts need to be replaced with more current material, and books that never leave the library shelves need to be replaced with something patrons actually want to read. The blog http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com provides excellent examples of books that have passed their expiration dates.