Weeding Your Library

“Weeding” your library

One job that needs to be done is to weed the library. Right now I am preaching to myself since this is a difficult thing for me to do. This year we will work on sections of our libraries and do some weeding. You can weed along with me if you like. If you don’t have the time to do it as I do, then please keep these guidelines somewhere to refer to when you are able to weed.

The Library Media Center Handbook, May 2002 has guidelines that I will be referring to over the months. Another source is Sunlink which gives guidelines to follow along with some recommended titles to discard. I also will refer to the CREW method which has provided guidance for over 30 years.

Here are some general guidelines to follow.

What to Weed?
1. Materials that are worn or damaged.
2. Mediocre writing style, especially material that was written quickly to meet popular interest that has passed.
3. Unused sets of books. Specific volumes can be kept if they meet your needs.
4. Self-published or small press materials that are not circulating.
5. Poorly bound or poorly printed editions.
6. Items that are dirty, shabby, warped, marked up, mutilated, or ‘edited’ by patrons.
7. Books with very small print or poor quality pictures.
8. Materials containing information that is not easily accessible. For example, no table of contents, no index, or the content is poorly designed.
9. Materials containing outdated, inaccurate information, and outdated interpretations, values, and attitudes.
10. Material for which the format or reading level is inappropriate to the reading level or interest level of the students.
11. Material which is no longer in demand, or which no longer supports the curriculum.
12. Material that is condescending, stereotyped, patronizing, or biased.
13. Material which has not circulated in three to five years. (Remember that you are the final decision. You CAN keep a book that hasn’t circulated if you know it is important to your library or school.)
14. Duplicate copies of books not circulating.


The CREW Guidelines have an acronym MUSTIE which stand for:
M – Misleading or inaccurate
U – Ugly or worn beyond mending or rebinding
S – Superseded by a new edition or a much better book on the subject
T – Trivial. Of no discernible literary or scientific merit; the interest in this book has passed.
I – Irrelevant to the needs and interests of your community
E – Elsewhere. The material or information can be located elsewhere. (This may not apply to most of us since our schools likely don’t have interlibrary loan and few of us have electronic formats.)

I realize that there is a LOT of information here. If you want to download the Crew manual, I will be referring to the 2008 revision by Jeanette Larson. http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/

Have a great day!
Audrey