I've found that if I can work while teachers are not in our building (we
aren't at a school site, so what I'm about to share may not be realistic at
a school site unless you have a key and can get in after hours and
weekends), I don't risk upsetting them when they see all those "perfectly
good books" being weeded (e.g. "Siam Today" copyright date 1944). After
removing weeds from the shelves we remove any and all marks, barcodes, dust
jackets, pockets, name stamps, etc. from our prospective weeds. We rub out
our site name with a permanent black marker, remove barcodes, spine labels
(often discovering another one hand lettered in white or black - which we
also rub out). The coup de gras is when I usually tear off the covers and
then tear the first few pages of the book either out or in half. I've
found that the dumpster divers won't bring stuff back to me that's
physically "damaged".
When I'm weeding out at a local school, I ask the library staff which they
are most comfortable with - vandalizing the weeds (as we do in our library)
and just putting them in the dumpster, or for us to cart them away to our
dumpster. They usually choose the latter, although I did do one school
which had so much buy-in from the staff on improving their library, that
they really wanted those old books to go and had no emotions about them
going into the dumpster. Also, one can often find book recyclers who will
do their magic with the covers and paper from the books. That always seems
like a win-win situation: the dump sites aren't overleaded with stuff that
takes time to break down, and the old books are used for making new ones or
paper, so something else.
***********************************************************************
Kathy Graves, IMC Director/Librarian
Siskiyou County Office of Education
609 South Gold Street,
Yreka, CA 96097
e-mail: kgraves@sisnet.ssku.k12.ca.us FAX: 530-842-8436
hmpg: http://www.sisnet.ssku.k12.ca.us/~imcftp AV: 530-842-8428
Phone: 530-842-8427 Library: 530-842-8430
***********************************************************************
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