Weeding

[Irene Clise <iclise1@MICKEY.ESD113.WEDNET.EDU>]

I've been scanning the recent messages on weeding halfheartedly because
I'm in a newly opened school and fortunately have thousands of beautiful
new books and weeding won't need to be considered for a couple years at
least but I'd like to share my BIG MISTAKE with weeding in a high school
I was in.
 
I had been a LMS in three schools prior to this one and felt I knew how
to weed and was pretty good at it.  The shelves in this library were
crowded and I began systematically to weed--first the science section (no
surprises there -- it was easy to discard so many because of being
outdated).  I moved into social sciences because there were so many, and
the same held true--a lot of out of date materials on topical issues
(rape, drug and alcohol abuse, etc.)
 
THEN I proceeded into the literature section.  There were SO many old
collections and investigation showed they hadn't been checked out in
years and I proceeded to weed them.  Before I tossed most of the (thank
goodness) I asked the English department if they wanted to browse through
and see if they wanted some.  I found out that those collections (poetry,
short stories, etc. etc. were out of print, they were used annually by
almost the entire department--they hadn't shown check out dates because
they were sent to the rooms for the teachers to use with their students.
I could have made a very miserable decision had I tossed them and made a
VERY bad impression on the English department--
 
MORAL--be very careful with what you weed your first year on the job.
Patiently wait to see how and what materials are used -- some materials
CANNOT be replaced.
                        Irene Clise
 
Irene Clise
Library Media Specialist
River Ridge High School
8929 Martin Way East
Olympia, Washington 98516
iclise1@mickey.esd113.wednet.edu