Weeding the Library

Greetings!
It is time to begin to wind down the school year. Don’t forget to take a look at the library and see where those needs are for next year. Yes, I know we have three weeks left of school, but here’s where you can put some responsible students to work for you and help make your life a bit easier. More on that in a little bit.

It is time to weed the library. I know it is hard to throw out books, so I am going to try to make this easier for you. Think about why you have a library. I would guess that you have a library so students can choose reading material and so you have supplementary material for your curriculum. That would be the main function of a school library. You may have noticed that our SDA curriculum changes as the years go by. It may be that some of the books and materials in your library do not fit the curriculum now or they may even be outdated. If so, then they may not be needed any longer.
Here is a short list of weeding criteria for you to use as you begin to improve your library.

1. BATTERED BOOKS - Weed out any books that are torn, taped, yellowed, missing pages, damaged, shabby, mutilated, marked up, warped covers, or dilapidated in any way. If these books are valuable to you or the school, replace them with newer better copies.

2. OLD BOOKS - Look carefully at the old books in your library.
a. If there are any that aren’t useful to your school, or don’t fit the curriculum, then consider weeding it out. Watch for books that may be valuable to someone else. Those can be sold online or at a used bookstore. BUT – just because a book is old doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good story or a good resource. Think about sending some of these home with students over the summer for them to evaluate. Make out a simple form they can fill out for each book they read.
b. Weed out books with very small print or poor quality pictures.
c. Some books may be old but the information is still valid. Keep these.
d. “Old” is difficult to determine. A science or astronomy book can be ‘old’ after only 5 – 8 years, but information on a career may still be current after 15 years. You get to decide if a book is too old or not.

3. OUTDATED INFORMATION – Repeat after me: “It is better to have NO information rather than FALSE information.” Think technology, science, health, medicine, computers, and space. Enough said.

4. DUPLICATE COPIES –
a. How many copies of “Little House on the Prairie” do you need in your library? Is one or two enough? If so, then keep the best one and discard the extra copies. Keep in mind that duplicate copies can also be great to have. Some kids like to read the same book and if each can have his or her own copy, then it’s a good thing.
b. E. G. WHITE BOOKS – Do you need multiple copies of each title? If your school is like many other schools, you likely have many of these. Consider paring down to one good set of the Conflict of the Ages, and Testimonies plus other titles that are useful to your school. Donate the rest to the church library. Keep what you need for your curriculum.

5. ENCYCLOPEDIA – How old is yours? Do you even have one? Encyclopedias are considered outdated if they are more than five years old. Very likely most of your students ‘google’ the information they need or you may use an online encyclopedia which is much cheaper. Consider keeping the newest set for the library and using an online encyclopedia for current information.

6. DONATED BOOKS – These can be tricky. If the donor is in your community and would be offended if you weeded ‘their’ book, then keep it until they leave. It is not worth making an enemy just to have a few inches of shelf space. However, if the book is in bad shape or has incorrect information in it, then you might try to find a way to dispose of the book. (Maybe it can be shelved in a closet!)

Keep in mind that the library should be useful to you and to your students. Keep what works and weed what doesn’t. What doesn’t work for one school might very well be great for another.
Here’s where your students can help. Enlist students to go through the library shelf by shelf and ask them to pull books that look battered and or old and put them in a box for you to check over.

You will still make the decision, but they have helped with the first part of weeding. This will also have the added benefit of giving them a little bit of ‘ownership’ in the library.
If you have books that need repair, don’t forget that there will be a hands on book mending session at the ASDAL School Librarians’ workshop. You will learn how to do some simple repairs then.

Best of luck in your weeding process. Now I need to get busy and do some myself!

Audrey