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LLC: Effective Practice Guide

Supporting Effective Practice in our Library Learning Commons in SD57

Weeding Philosophy

undefinedWeeding is a crucial collection development tool for Teacher-Librarians.

Weeding:

  • Keeps the collection current
  • In good condition

We are school library learning commons. We are not museums! We are not archives!

So weeding is just getting rid of anything old and in bad shape, right?

 

 

Weeding requires knowledge of the collection. It must be done by a teacher-librarian and not a clerk. A clerk may pull items for perusal by the teacher-librarian, but it is the responsibility of the teacher-librarian to understand the nuance of weeding.

  • Does a book 'circulate' without checkout - often puberty books circulate around the library without being taken out by curious students.
  • Does removing this book silence a marginalized voice with low representation in the catalogue?
    • If so, you may want to ask yourself why there's not more of this voice in the library collection and how to use reader's advisory techniques to get it, and others like it, to circulate.
  • Is this book part of a series and removing it would cause a problem for readers of the series going forward?

One acronym that can be used is MUSTI

M - Misleading = Factually Inaccurate
U - Ugly = Worn beyond mending or rebinding
S - Superceded = Newer edition or a better book on the subject
T - Trivial = Of dubious/no literary or scientific merit
I - Irrelevant = Isn't of use / for the clientele - see above point about marginalized voices about effective use of this

 

 

Weeding Reports

Weeding Reports are run by the DLC and contain lists of items to investigate for weeding. Weeding reports must be requested by the teacher-librarian.

Email Cathy Drew with the list of parameters you want the report to be on:

  1. Location in library - Fiction, non-fiction, Easy, Textbooks, etc
  2. Last checkout date - What is the last time it was checked out that you would like as the cut off. We generally suggest at least 5 years
  3. When was the item added to the catalog - You can further limit by selecting a creation date. Generally this should be at least 10 years.

The above report was done using the parameters: Easy, Not Checked out in 5 years, Was added before 2010.

This is specifically the NEVER CHARGED list.