I think it's time you visited C Branch, he said.
I looked at the picture. The Tween and Teen collections were side to side packed. Each shelf had zero room on it. The pages have been, apparently, shelving onto trucks.
No problem. I'm a weeder, and I love it.
As karma would have it, my staff who called out sick last week leaving me to fill in for Tiny Tales called out again yesterday and today ... so I was heading out to C Branch anyway. Stay for the day and weed. Good plan.
So, by the time I was done at 5 pm, the collection was about a third to half of the size it was. The shelves had tons of breathing room, and the stuff that wasn't circulating is gone.
My process sometimes involves a shelf list, and other times simply involves the books, a truck and a computer. This time I loaded each shelf onto a truck, and rolled over to a workstation. Scanned each book, checked it's stats (creation date, last use date, total use) as well as it's condition. Condition is my first marker - regardless of use, books will go based on condition. If the condition is bad but the book is popular, it goes to the replace list. If the use is low and it's been around for a while, then it goes. Each collection has a different threshold ... this one was 2009.
And, of course, weeding isn't just about tossing stuff. I learned several things about the collection:
1) Graphic Novels: These kids are reading the graphic novels. Every single one out there has circulated a lot, and recently. What does this tell me? It's time to stop interfiling them with the fiction and give them their own collection space. It's also time to weed the collection at A Branch and send some of it to C Branch to see if it goes out.
2) Non-Circulating books: The Orca hi interest/lo vocab books are not circulating at all out here. Filing them in the Teen collection does nothing except take up space. I pulled them out and am sending them back to my office ... I am going to explore other options for them. Putting them with the Adult Learner collection might be the answer. But I also would like to explore other options ... 'Quick Reads' perhaps? Any ideas out there? :)
3) I'm buying the right stuff: The books that are circulating are really circulating ... which tells me that the stuff that I've been buying lately is right on track.
And now the kids will have an easier time finding the stuff they want because the stuff they don't want is gone.
And that's why weeding is so important.
One branch, two collections down ... Three branches, 7 collections to go. But I'm geared up and ready to keep rolling.
