Weeding Woes.

Before I became a teacher-librarian, I hadn't thought much about weeding. My focus had been on bringing books into the library; not taking them out. It wasn't until I saw the state of an unweeded library that I realized how important weeding really is to a collection. Keeping up with weeding is equally important to bringing new materials into the library.

About two years ago, the school I'm at was torn down and we were moved into a beautiful new building. This meant that the entire library had to be packed up and moved. Actually, not the entire library - we had to weed the library in order to fit into the new space. It was a truly horrible experience on a number of levels.

The first layer of horribleness was actually going into the stacks and seeing what was there. The number of books from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was astounding, and the smell was equally astounding. What was most heart-breaking was to see the number of books that had been on the shelf for decades, but had never been taken out. It made me want to cry. In order to make the process doable in the time we had, we were given a date - 1998. Nothing before 1998 was to make the move to the new school. This gave a good starting point to revitalize the collection once we came to the new building.

The second layer of horribleness came from the reaction of the staff to this mass weeding. Instead of respecting the knowledge and experience of the librarians, and instead of appreciating how hard weeding is, many staff members were infuriated at the books being removed from the shelves. It seemed as though a number of staff members took it personally when we sent a book to storage. One comment in particular stands out - we were asked why we didn't value Plato any more. There is a difference between removing a copy of The Republic published in the 1950s and not valuing Plato. It really hurt when teachers said that we were committing a crime, and that we were as bad as the Nazis with their book burning (at least Godwin's Law holds true). I didn't realize that weeding was such a debatable topic. It's unreasonable to expect a library to continue to add to its collection without ever removing anything.

The comments didn't improve when we moved to the new building. Now we were being told how wonderful the old library was and how bare this library is. Don't we remember fondly what it was like in the old building? My general response is no. I don't remember the old library fondly. I remember over stuffed shelves where it was impossible to find anything; I remember the smell of old moldy paper and books; I remember students not wanting to take anything out. That's what I remember.

When I took over the library this year, one of the first things I did was a massive weed. We sent nearly 30 boxes of books to Library Surplus. Did it take a number of books off the shelves? Yes. Did it make the shelves look a little empty? Yes. However, it also opened up the space to properly display books. As a result, circulation has shot up. We have more than tripled our circulation over last year. How can this not be a good thing? There is now space to showcase some of the books. This gives students a chance to see them.

I am a complete fan of weeding. It revitalizes the library and allows the new purchases to be seen and circulated.

One last note, I read another blog about weeding about a week ago and was really struck by the similarities between me and this other librarian. I posted the blog in a Facebook group to which I belong as a way to show the other side of being a librarian. Again, I was roundly attacked. Hitler and the Nazis were mentioned again, I was told I didn't know what I was doing, and so on. I didn't realize that intelligent, passionate, educated, book loving people could be so ignorant about the importance of weeding.

When I commented on this on Twitter, another librarian told me that she always weeds quietly. She doesn't advertise the fact that she is doing it; it's like weeding must be done in secret. That bothers me. Weeding is an important aspect of librarianship, and if we are hiding it, we can never hope to change the attitudes of those who label us book haters. It is an act of great love to remove a book from the shelf to make room for something newer. I say we should stand up and proudly announce that we weed.