I love the backlist. Hearts, flowers, insert its name into song lyrics kind of love. And, yet, when the Penguin Group says that libraries can’t have access to the new books that we purchased access to on behalf of our patrons–that we’ll probably still be allowed to lend some of their dusty old unsellable backlist, I take offense. Really, Penguin? Libraries are the problem?

You’re mad at Amazon.com and your taking it out on us. (I”m not the first person to come up with this theory. I just had nothing to back it up.)Your authors are jumping ship to “self” publish with Amazon. Amazon has a pipeline to its customers that you can’t even dream of. Amazon went out and built an eReader from scratch so that they could sell people your books in yet another format. And you’re going take your titles off of our digital shelves? And blame security issues?

You don’t have to fear libraries, Penguin.You don’t even have to respect us. But if you don’t think that we’re kind of smart and really pretty awesome at organizing stuff, then you’re going to be really, really surprised. Oh, and we’re the PR equivalent of holding a puppy. You really don’t want your picture taken kicking us.

A fresh group of the best book blogs ever can be found here on Shelfrenewal.  If you’re interested in having Karen or Rebecca (or both of us, we’re a hoot when we get together!) come out and tell you and your staff (or your patrons!) all about these fabulous blogs, contact us.

If you attended the KCMLIN/MARRT workshop on Book Blogging, the handout can now be found here on Shelfrenewal.

With Halloween just a few days away, I wanted to make sure you are all up to speed on everything horror.  No better place to get your horror fix than at Becky Spratford’s RA for All: Horror blog.

An offshoot of her regular RA for All blog (we’ve crushed on her before, ’cause she’s awesome…), the goal of her horror-specific blog  is to help librarians match horror readers with their next good read.   She’s got an index of Horror Reviews, as well as information about publishers, awards, and other Horror resources.  This month (Oct 2011), her theme has been “31 days of Horror”, and she’s been diligently posting what she’s reading, roundups of horror links, blogging about film and TV, and more.

Boo!

Think of it like an absolutely no stakes War Games. You type in the name of an author and 30 or so other authors that may be more or less like the author you entered fill the screen. Adjacency to the original author indicates a higher degree of similarity. Literature-Map is part of Gnod, “An experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. It’s a self-adapting system, living on this server and ‘talking’ to everyone who comes along.  You might call it a search-engine to find things you don’t know about.” But mostly it’s just fun.

So of course, here at ShelfRenewal, we really want to see your Dusty Books get out there into the hands of readers.  But we all know that some books are past their prime, and it’s time to weed. 

A big question is, what do you do with those weeded books?

Better World Books

•  They’ll pay for pick-up; you can donate the books and designate a charity for the profits to go to, or they will sell and give you $$.

Recycle

• Special county recycling days
• Temporarily rent more recycling bins – fairly inexpensive

Sell

• Friends Groups usually need to take over selling
• Library booksales – ongoing or events
• eBay (volunteers, Friends) – if it’s worth the time

Offer out to others

• DON’T GIVE THEM JUNK
• Local schools
• System email lists
• Nearby libraries

Repair -   Is it worth your time or money?  Book binderies are few and far between.  Can this be replaced?

Finally, realize that some just have to go in the trash, like it or not.  No one has a use for moldy, smelly, damaged books.

Going off of last week’s weeding topic, we had several questions specifically relating to weeding academic collections.  Here our some of our Q&A’s for that topic.

Question: Since I am not a subject expert in everything -we are a small academic library with a small staff-how can I identify the “classic” or “landmark” books in a subject that we would want to keep? Or should it not even be a consideration?

Answer from Holly and Mary: A small academic library could use the Public Library Catalog to build a core collection in different subject areas.  To be perfectly honest, I’ve never worked in an academic library and I don’t know if there is an academic library equivalent to the PLC, but if there is I would guess that it is geared to large university libraries.  For most small academics, the PLC might be just the thing.  Be sure to keep YOUR patrons and YOUR mission in mind when making choices for your collection, since the PLC can’t do that.  It’s a good starting point for non-subject specialists building a collection, though.

 
Question:  We have a professor who is adamant about keeping all of the books in his subject area, even though they do not circulate.

Answer from Rebecca: Without sounding too callous about it, my answer would be to take either the surreptitious route or the line-in-the-sand approach.  Meaning, you could remove the books a few at a time, secretly, and hope that he doesn’t take notice (claim theft?  overdues?)  or, you could put the onus on him – if he wants them to be kept, he needs to find storage space for them in his office or his department.

Question: Are there any resources for weeding academic libraries specifically?

Answer from Rebecca:  I do think that many of the weeding principles apply no matter what the library type – mainly the fact that a well-written collection development policy is a must to guide the staff in weeding.  It might be helpful to check with other institutions similar to yours and see what kind of weeding procedures they have in place.  Looking online, I couldn’t find any concrete articles on weeding academic libraries specifically, however, many academic libraries’ policies started popping up.

Weeding is one of those polarizing library topics.  I rarely find anyone who is neutral about it – you either love it or loathe it.  (I happen to LOVE it.)  I recently moderated and presented for a Library Journal webinar on weeding, along with Holly Hibner and Mary Kelly of Awful Library Books and Kathy Schalk-Greene of the Mount Laurel (NJ) Library.    (The webinar is archived and available for viewing - you do need to register.  Sponsored by Collection HQ.)

We had a lively time answering some Q&A at the end, and I’d like to post some of those here on ShelfRenewal.

Question:  Do you have an advice on how to weed a reference collection down to fit in a smaller space?  We can’t use circulation records since we don’t keep track of reference uses.  Staff does not want to get rid of ANYTHING.
Answer from Rebecca:  Would you feel comfortable micromanaging, and making staff justify keeping items?  For example, in the biography case, if staff insist they need several different sets, I would pull a couple of them, put them in storage or the staff workroom, and then make staff tell me when they actually used them and why (could they have used something else?)  Sounds silly and as I said, micromanaging, but with some people that’s what you have to do.   Are you able to shift some materials to circulating?  I did that at a library where we decided to drop our reference shelving down about 80%.  We moved the bulk of the “good” leftovers, after weeding for condition and age, into the circulating collection.  This freed up our space and then puts those items either into the hands of our patrons… or on the next weeding report.

Question: There are still 100 + dedicated users of our  cassette collection for people not able to read print. Extensive weeding is taking place – but we are dragging our feet about some titles knowing we will probably not get them again in a physical audio format. Do you have any suggestions for us?
Answer from Holly and Mary: That’s hard, isn’t it?  You’ve probably built up series over time that are either too expensive to replace in a different format in their entirety, or which are just out of print.  How about looking at the circulation statistics of those titles very closely?  Not just number of circulations, but WHEN they circulated.  How many times per month/quarter/year have they really gone out?  If that number meets or exceeds the benchmark you’ve set for that collection, it might be worth purchasing the title in another format.  If not…well, it’s tough, but just weed them.  Unless, of course, you have lots of space and can keep just those titles you can’t bare to part with.  It all comes back to use.  Are the titles being used or aren’t they?

Question:  How to I weed a collection such as the automotive repair books?
Answer from Rebecca: I’ve worked at several libraries where they’ve completely done away with the books (I am assuming you’re talking about the Chilton manuals and the like?).  They just were not circulating, they take up a LOT of room on the shelves, and they can be easily replaced with online database materials (if I’m not mistaken, Ebsco has a wonderful online product, people can print out pages they need).  It depends on your usage, of course, but I feel that many libraries hang on to those books simply because it’s what they’ve always done.  But if your patrons are not using them anymore, it’s time to be ruthless and let them all go.

Question: Can you learn to love weeding?
Answered live:  There are born weeders, and there are hoarders. If need to learn to love weeding, you can help yourself by attending conference programs, webinars, read articles, and really, see the results from your weeding.  Also, weed slowly and small, weed as you go along – then it won’t seem so destructive or overwhelming.

Question: If a book is 10 years old and hasn’t circed recently, is giving them one last chance (on an endcap or display) justified?
Answered live:  If you have the display space, and it’s not outdated information, go ahead and give it one last chance.  You never know what might catch someone’s eye.  If it doesn’t go out, then you know you were right to pull it.

Question:  How do you maintain fiction series or complete collection of an author’s work?
Answered live: If the author is still popular or still writing, it is important to keep series intact.  It should be all or none – keep it all, or get rid of it all (don’t weed book #5 just because that’s the one with the least circs).  Local used bookstores can be a great source for old harcdovers in good condition, also AbeBooks.com.  Don’t discount mass market paperbacks as replacements – you aren’t going to find a nice hardcover of A is for Alibi, but it’s OK to just keep purchasing mass markets to replace it.

Question: How do you justify weeding to a patron when they complain your budget is going up?
Answered live:  Transparency is key – a “Cart of Shame” works well to illustrate why you’re getting rid of materials.  Show them the badly outdated books, the moldy books, the damaged books.

It seems like everywhere I turn these days, I read something about Erin Morganstern’s The Night Circus. I was thinking of doing a readalike list… and then Neal Wyatt did it over at Library Journal. See, good things come to those who procrastinate wait.

Don’t want to let go of your warm fuzzies for the city that never sleeps? You don’t have to! Join the New York Times’ new Big City Book Club and fall in love all over again.