How I Learned to Weed
with Confidence
A wider view of collection
management
Katherine Marschall
Saint Mary’s College
Notre Dame, Indiana
OVGTSL 2015
Why I hate to weedor who doesn’t?
The Case Against WeedingNew library building in 1982 – No more weeding!
We are an academic library
Can we actually make those decisions?
Really?
 We will keep buying books
 We will not weed
 We will not shift over the floors
Houston- we have a
problem!
 30 years later, space is at a premium.
 Old books are off putting
 Too many out of date titles mask
inadequacies in the collection.
 Nursing, chemistry, and biology are
important departments- they all focus on
current material!
Past Methods- we tried:
 I don’t like this book, it looks old.
 Please come and see what we would like to throw out
A Project with a plan
Starting with the reference collection:
Weeding policy
Every effort will be made to insure that
the collection is up-to-date and
germane to the courses offered.
Materials for weeding or replacement
will be evaluated in accordance with
guidelines similar to those for selection
and done in consultation with the
faculty and librarians.
CREW and MUSTIE
CREW: Constant Review, Evaluation, Weeding
Weeding is a part of collection development!
CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries.
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/index.ht
ml
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
MUSTIE
 M = Misleading
 U = Ugly
 S = Superseded
 T = Trivial
 I = Irrelevant
 E = (available) Elsewhere
Your ILS is your Friend!
 Pull circulation information
 Create spreadsheets:
- Call number
- Basic bib: title, author
- Year of publication
- Circulation information
- How many times
- When was the last time it circulated
( )
Move to Circulation Collection
( )
Withdraw
( )Better World
Books
( )
(
)Recycle
( ) Destroy
Purchase New
Edition
ISBN:
Cost: $
( ) Mend
( )Bind
Title:
Copyright Year:
Worldcat Holdings:
Note
s
Librarians Initials:
( )Replace
Where did the books go?
 Worst case – recycling!
 We preferred –
Better World Books
 Easy solutionReference  Circulation
But would this scale up for the general
collection?
Lots of paper!
Serendipity!
PALNI/ALI Shared Print Project
(Nov 2013)
Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI)
Academic Libraries of Indiana (ALI)
(ca. 34 libraries participating)
“Assess usage, duplication, and dispersion of
holdings”
“deselecting low-use, widely-held titles”
i.e. WEED
What was included:
Print circulating monographs:
 juvenile materials
 government documents that are classified
 music scores
Holdings compared to:

The 34 participant libraries

All Indiana libraries

The ‘big 3’- Indiana University, Notre Dame, Purdue

All of the libraries in the United States
Create a list of ‘Scarcely held’ titles
Sustainable Collections
Services
 Collected data from the libraries bibliographic data, location, call number
 circulation counts (in-house circ too if that was available)
 Last date circulated
 Created database “Green Glass” –which
includes holdings in OCLC for Indiana, US
wide, and selected ‘research’ libraries
 List of ‘scarcely held’- separated out
What is Scarcely Held?
Most restrictive:
Least restrictive:
1. Unique to Indiana
OR
2. Fewer than 10 in US
AND
3. Not in HathiTrust
1.
Held by fewer than 4
libraries in Indiana
OR
2. Held by fewer than 20
libraries in the US
OR
3. Not held by at least 1 of
the ‘big 3’
Sustainablecollections.com
21
Scenario 7
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
to be protected
Sustainablecollections.com
available for withdrawal
22
New Juvenile Books section and Folio shelving
Moving the Juvenile books from the floor with P-PS opened up that floor, and which
will be the hardest area to weed!
How I Learned to Weed with Confidence
OVGTSL 2015
Allen, Melissa. “Weed’Em and Reap: The Art of Weeding to Avoid Criticism.” Library Media Connection. 28.6 (2010):32-33. Google
Scholar. Web. 3 February 2015.
*Banks, Julie. "Weeding book collections in the age of the Internet." Collection building 21.3 (2002): 113-119. Web. 15 May 2015.
Crosetto, Alice, Laura Kinner, and Lucy Duhon. “Assessment in a Tight Time Frame: Using Readily Available Data to Evaluate Your
Collection.” Collection Management, 33:1-2 (2008): 29-50, DOI:10.1080/01462670802157908 Web. 1 May 2015.
Dickinson, Gail. “Crying Over Spilled Milk.” Library Media Connection, 23.7 (2005): 24-26. Academic Search Premier. Web.
3.February 2015.
*Larsen, Jeanette. CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries. Texas State Library and Archives Commission, 2012. Web. 3
February 2015.
Martin, Malachi and Nashaat Sayed. “Good Grooming: Basic Issues in Weeding and Weeding Policy in Library Collections.”
Collection Building, 21.3 (2002): 113-119. Academic Search Premier. Web.
Moroni, Alene E. “Weeding in a Digital Age: Shelf Clutter Can be a Problem for eBooks as Well.” Library Journal, 137.15 (2012): 2628. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 February 2015
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Currency of Resources in Community College Library Collections.” College & Research Libraries, 60.4 (1999): 316-339. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 9 March 2015.
*Slote, Stanley J. Weeding Library Collections: Library Weeding Methods. Englewood, Colo. Libraries Unlimited, 1997.
Smith, Erin T. “Assessing Collection Usefulness: An Investigation of Library Ownership of the Resources Graduate Students Use.”
College & Research Libraries, 64.5 (2003): 344-355. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 March 2015.