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Here are some wonderful suggestions from our colleagues, as well as some
smiles! Hope this is helpful.
Betty Wolfe
Library Media Speicalist
Avon Middle School
Avon, CT
blwwolfe@aol.com

Never, ever put a whole book into a dumpster... at the least good meaning
people will return them, at the worst, it will make headlines in the local
paper or tv news. I would take the time to remove the covers and put the
insides in the recycling bin and the covers, stamped 'withdrawn' in the
dumpster, in a couple of layers of plastic bags. When I did practicum for my
school library certification, my cooperating librarian told me about her
method. Withdrawn books were opened half way and placed cover up on the floor
of her office. After a couple of months, the books were destroyed enough that
no one thought twice about seeing them in the garbage.

In my first school, I was 'lucky' enough to have a roof leak over the summer,
right over the worst of the science and geography books. There wasn't any
question about throwing them out and buying new ones <grin>.

Dan Robinson
HW Wilson Company
Bronx, NY
drobinson@hwwilson.com




I have been lucky enough not to have these return problems most of my library
career (10 years or so as Systems Librarian at a college, 2 at a community
college, 3 at another, 1 in a private school and 1 in a public school) but at
the private school people were moving discards badck into the library and
leaving them there. One time I forgot we were throwing away a videocassette
set and found one or two back inside, and were scratching our heads as to why
we could not find the others!

I suggest it does happen. And custodians do not want to remove them,
something related to heaviness, and recycling.

The NYC director of School Library Services suggested that you can get rid of
an encyclopedia set, one volume at a time. You take one down, throw it in a
waste can outside of school. The next day you take down another. Of course,
remove any school library marks or better yet, stamp them "withdrawn." I take
the monthly supplements of Readers' Guide and other HWW indexes, tear part of
them and throw them into a waste can. The next day I will find them out of
the can. And I put them back there.

Luis R. Ramos, Librarian
ACORN Community HS
Brooklyn NY
flyer13@aol.com


I first offer the books to the teachers and then to the students. Whatever is
left is usually only worthy of the trash can. I stamp the books discards, and
if the material is out of date I have a stamp that says "outdated" materials.
The teachers still use these books; they know they have to be selective about
which sections are still ok. I've never had anyone give me grief about
getting rid of them once I explain my criteria.

Nina Jackson
Franklin Middle School (6-8 grade)
Long Beach, CA
njackson@lbusd.k12.ca.us


I take all the books I have weeded and put them in boxes and tape up the
boxes and write trash on them. I take them out to the school dumpster. I
don't do this to hide the weeding, I just feel it is not fair to make the
custodian trod all these books out to the dumpster. I don't give them out
because I feel that the information is dated, the book is damaged, or the
subjects (in fiction and picture books are what my students would not relate
to) that I should not give them out. Especially dated nonfiction material,
I feel it is wrong to put misinformation or old information or wrong
information into the hands of our children. My children might be low income
students however, I still don't feel that they deserve second, third or
fourth best material. If the books were good enough to give to the
children, I would not be weeding them from the library.

Ruth Homer
Librarian
South Main Street School
Pleasantville, NJ 08232
ear3@comcast.net


GREAT Question...
Well at one school I had the principal have a dumpster brought to the window
of the school library, then opened the window and out they went.(actually
dumpster came and went three times)..now this was a major weed, the
principal almost came unglued, but the collection was a museum piece for
sure...NOW I should have done all this in the dark of the night...teachers
suffered all sorts of anxiety over books being tossed out, some got
boxes--even grabbed some as the dumpster was leaving and took them back to
their classroom....That is not my idea of weeding, IF IT IS NOT SUITABLE FOR
THE LIBRARY, THEN IT IS NOT SUITABLE FOR THE CLASSROOM....KIDS DESERVE
BETTER....The principal over the past few years has been very successful in
securing additional funds annually (at one time 18K) to get the place in
good shape. If we had kept those old tombes he would not have gotten a red
cent to replace them.


I am a vigorous weeder, and have had a lot of these experiences. In a public
library, we carted discards out to the dumpster in our parking lot. Some were
taken to the branch library in the next township and put in their bookdrop.
Did I ever get a phone call about that! Three times I found people IN our
dumpster retrieving books. Mind you, this is the same dumpster that had our
lunch garbage. After that, we disposed of them in a different place.

In schools, I have received a great deal of criticism for throwing out books,
whether I put them in the teachers' lounge or the dumpster. I finally wrote
up an explanation and put it, with my principal's blessing, in teacher
mailboxes. After that, there was no more criticism to my face.

I will only pass along discards to a sale, poor school, or third world
country (I always wondered why they needed books in English?) if they are
reasonably current and in good condition, such as a second copy we didn't
need. I personally am reluctant to give away a ratty copy of anything. I
choose to do this carefully, since I have so much to do in the time I have. I
don't wish to spend my school district's time delivering books. This is also
why I don't personally tear off the covers so the paper can be put in
recycling.

Gail Conley
Elem. School Libn. (between jobs)
Pennington NJ
cyberconley@aol.com

District policy and state law/administrative code should address this. We
withdraw ours, send to district warehouse where they are offered for sale.
Generally, they sell box sealed as is.
Here is the state law I reference.
http://www.leg.wa.gov/RCW/index.cfm?fuseaction=section&section=28A.335.180


John Lees, Librarian
Mt. Baker Middle School Library
<http://www.auburn.wednet.edu/mtbaker/library>
620-37th SE
Auburn, WA 98002-8011
253-804-4555
jlees@mx.auburn.wednet.edu <mailto:jlees@mx.auburn.wednet.edu>



When I first started at this position the former  librarian was a nun who
still lived in the convent. I
would find books I had thrown out on my desk. I just started taking them home
to discard. Now I pull apart
the really bad stuff and throw it in the garbage at school. Other stuff I put
out for teachers to take.
Anything left I give to the local AAUW for their annual used book sale.

Some districts require that discarded books be returned to the central office
for warehousing. What
a waste of space, but I understand that people get upset at what they
perceive as waste of taxpayer
money.

Jill Brown, LMS
Nardin Academy
Buffalo, NY
buflib@yahoo.com


Discarding books can be a sensitive issue for many school superintendents.
Ours has had irate phone calls from local taxpayers about seeing "valuable
books and equipment" at the dump. One time the district hired a waste
disposal company to take things "far away" only to find out they were
illegally dumping their loads in roadside fields. We were horrified!
We are also not allowed to give our discards to the public library book sale,
as taxpayers would be paying for them twice (or questioning our weeding
judgement).
So, first we try to give away as many books to our faculty/staff/students
(with a disclaimer about ou-of-date information)......Then we pack up what is
left and disguise it a bit before it goes to landfill. What we go through!!!
Vicki Reutter, LMS
Cazenovia (NY) HS
vreutt@aol.com



We give to the teachers the books that still have pages in decent shape. Our
school is full of big believers in classroom libraries.......so, therefore,
we do not hesitate in giving weeded books and discarded books to the
teachers. After we stamp the books "discard" inside and on the barcode label,
and the teachers don't want them.....we toss them. We have no problems with
accidentally getting them back

Judy Magee
Librarian's Asst.
Madison Sta. Library
Madison, MS.


If your district doesn't have a process or procedure set up, it probably
should. Unless it is a private school, you are dealing with taxpayer money
and it needs to be accounted for. I would think even in a private school
there would be some level of accountability. Some of those processes are
there to prevent misuse of funds (say, buying books for
personal use) which could cause some serious grief.

We: Stamp book in 2-3 places with Discarded stamps (one is more legal
sounding with phrase like 'Material has been removed from use at Evergreen
School District, the other is a big 'Discarded'. They then get picked up by
our courier and sent to storage. Twice a year there is a school-then public
sale of all items in storage. In eight years, I've
only had one item come back. I think it was a state reading award book from
several years back that we had multiple copies, wasn't popular, so it looked
in pretty good condition. When parent saw we had it still and the shelves
were pretty full, she understood why we removed it.

Robert Eiffert,Media Specialist
Pacific Middle School
Evergreen SD, Vancouver Washington
beiffert@attbi.com

************************************************************
I did two of Hartford's Elementary schools in as many years. In the first in
Blue Hills all but the newest and youngest teachers had fairly good sized
classroom libraries, so when I offered the weeds to them, they brought their
kids up to load up and take them home. Before I put them out I made sure to
rubber stamp them WITHDRAWN front and back . Most of the stuff I had was so
old that the rubber cement had dried out making pocket and card removal easy.
If I couldn't get the pocket free I made sure to stamp it as well. The kids
happily took home big boxes of my non-fiction. I weeded very little of the
Easy section in that school. The fiction got done during summer school when
we had fewer kids, but we sold them on some of it to use for their 20 min of
reading homework. We also left some in the front lobby for parents to pick
through. At the end of the summer the custodians and I boxed the left overs
up and put the boxes in the dumpster the evening before pick-up day. I didn't
have quite as much time to work on the weeding in the second school in Frog
Hollow. We did it during the last month of school simultaneously with Donohue
Group being in doing my recon. I did give the kids the opportunity to each
take a "forever book." at each visit, since circulation ended early. But
there I put most of the books in boxes in the staff room and teachers took
quite a few. The rest the parents group took and distributed in the
neighborhood. The only books that came back were from a few of my little ones
who smiled even bigger smiles when I again explained that they really could
keep the books that said WITHDRAWN for their very own. I don't know that this
all would work in Avon, though. I think there I would contact the Friends of
the Avon Public Library and find out if they would like them for their used
book sale. It would be good PR for your school.

Dorothy Tissair




My custodian places them in black plastic trash bags and takes them
immediately to the dumpster. In case anyone questions my weeding, I saved
one - "From Food to Fertilizer - the role of excrement in the life cycle"
, copyright 1973 ish.

_________________________________________________________________________
Suzanne Ng, Librarian
South Mountain Elementary School Library
444 West South Orange Avenue
South Orange, NJ 07079
1-973-378-7848 (voice & fax)
email: sng@somsd.k12.nj.us (school)
WWW: http://www.southmountain.somsd.k12.nj.us

********************************************************8

For the last 3 years, I've boxed up the weeds, sealed them in cartons, and
then had Rotary collect them. In Australia, Rotary has a central collection
point - the boxes are unpacked there, then repacked and transported to war
zones, third world countries, and anywhere that either doesn't have ANY
books, or has lost their books through some disaster.

I always tell the principal when I am ready to phone Rotary for a collection,
with an invitation to inspect the culls before they go. Sometimes they do,
sometimes they don't. I'm happy to open up any box they select (or even all
of them if asked). One particularly enlightened Acting Principal (the boss
was seconded elsewhere for a term - but then came back) said "You're in
charge of the library - if you think they should be tossed out, toss them."
(I like this guy's attitude, and look forward to the day when he gets the
principal's job!!! In fact, I think he should be put in
charge of "enlightening" other principals!)

Hope this is of interest?
Amanda Credaro

Amanda Credaro
Teacher Librarian
Seven Hills High School,
NSW, AUSTRALIA
phone: (02) 9624 3329
Fax: (02) 9838 8553
email: abcredaro@ozemail.com.au

*********************************

Yes, I do. I have a custodian who doesn't like me to throw anything away.
Many times I bring things home and put them out with my garbage. Sometimes,
depending on the books and demographics of my students I put them out on a
FREE table for the kids to take home. Good luck!
Cheers, Ruie

Ruie Chehak, Library Media Specialist
Sallie Jones Elementary School
1221 Cooper Street
Punta Gorda FL 33950
rchehak@aol.com or Ruie_Chehak@ccps.k12.fl.us


A standard at public libraries in Iowa is that they discard of at least 3
percent of their collection yearly. These are usually new enough that they do
them at a friends sale.  The books I throw away wouldn't be too desirable by
anyone. I usually take my stuff to the dumpster just the day before trash
pickup. Try to keep the janitors informed. I remember the time I threw one
book in the trash and it came back to the library.
Sometimes recycling takes books. OUt here in in Iowa they make livestock
bedding out of them. This stuff changes from year to year.
A Discard Stamp is useful.
Public Libraries book sales is another deposit place for discards.
Some schools sell them at auction with the surplus property.
Some administrators like to be informed.
Some teachers like to look them over. (I avoid this if at all possible.)
It never hurt to get a second opinion-- like the year we merged with an
neighboring school and turned the middle school into an intermediate. The
amount of books I discarded that time filled a Suburban floor to ceiling-
front to back. The librarian from the public library came and looked through
the discards and found less than one small box she wanted. Those discards
went to recycling.
Weeding is a lot easier if you do it in small increments. (year round)

Bob King
Midland Community Schools
Wyoming, Iowa 52362



Disposal of discards is tricky. We recently had someone from our community
return from a mission trip to Africa and she came and got ours for a charity
called "Books for Africa." I was worried about sending "old junk" all that way
but they have knowledgeable folks sort through them in Minneapolis then jsut
send what's usable. It was the best I've felt about discarding ever. Easy, no
guilt. Perhaps there's a "books for Africa" clearing house in your part of the
country, too.

Marcia Dressel, Librarian
Osceola Elementary School
Osceola, WI , USA
dressel@osceola.k12.wi.us




I have a used book sale once a year and sell what I can, $.25 for hard cover
and $.10 for paperback and $1.00 for reference. Whole sets of encyclopedias
are donated to classrooms, based on need (do you have a set in
your room at all? oldest copyright date?) No one has hassled me over getting
rid of old books--I explain I need
the room on the shelves and the materials are outdated. Once in awhile the
custodian will bring back a book found lying outside or in a locker that had
been discarded. I even include a line item in my annual report to the Board
of Education, detailing the number of books discarded, so no one can complain!
The unsold leftovers I used to donate to our town library for their book
sale, then to the neighboring town's public library, then to a Children's
Home "garage sale". Now, nobody wants them, so to the dumpster they go! I
hate to do it, but I've run out of ideas!
Hope this helps a little.
Darlene Forsythe, Galeton Area School, K-12, Galeton,PA


We are fortunate in my county in that we have a district media supervisor and
clerks who work in a warehouse. So, I send them my discards from weeding. My
predecessor evidently gave many of her discards to classroom teachers and
many students and teachers do try to give those back to me so it can be a
problem. I didn't get a chance to weed too much last year so everything I did
weed was either literally falling apart or so outdated it was pitiful and I
certainly didn't want anyone else to try to use the materials. This year I
plan to weed much more heavily, but will still probably be cautious about
passing the items on unless they really are of value. Usually for people who
are unfamiliar with library procedures it is better to speak of updating the
collection and retiring unmendable books than talking about getting rid of
"tons of books" (which they translate into "throwing books i.e. money away")
A humorous side note: In Beverly Cleary's memoir My Own Two Feet she writes
about her experiences as a children's librarian weeding and mentions that the
library director asked her to pour ink on books and tear pages so that they
could show to the town officials that the books really needed to be thrown
out!
Laura Palmer
Media Specialist, Lake Lucina Elementary
Jacksonville, FL
llpalmer@bellsouth.net


I have a funny story. When I started work at the library I am now employed
at, I started weeding the
ancient collection. The library is on the second floor so I got some students
to open the windows and
throw the old books into the back of a truck for disposal. This was during
the summer when very few
people are around. I still get people saying, "I wish I could have looked at
the books you threw out the
window, I might have wanted some." I totally agree that if your library does
not need the outdated
material you should not pass it on to someone else. Then they will have to
find a way to dispose of it!

Bambi L. Burden
Librarian
Saint Paul Lutheran High School
Concordia, MO 64020
blburden@yahoo.com


I have to agree with Bambi. Just today, I received two boxes of books from
our District Resource Centre coordinator who just cannot bring herself to
actually throw things away. Instead, she packs them up and sends them off
to the schools with a little note that says "Thought you might be able to use
this". So today in those boxes, I received materials to support a course that
has not been offered anywhere in our school district for the past 10 years.
Where did they end up? In the round filing cabinet, of course.

Diane Gallagher-Hayashi
Teacher-Librarian
Stelly's School
Saanich School District (63)
Saanichton, British Columbia
Canada, V8M 1S8
Diane_Hayashi@sd63.bc.ca
daichan@islandnet.com


I see you've gotten some replies, but I'll add my 2 cents worth. At another
school I threw in the dumpster a set of 20 year old encyclopedias. Mind you, I
did this after school hours. The next morning the encyclopedias were back
inside the building in the hallway. Why anyone would tangle with lunchroom
trash to get them out is beyond me!! : )

Now I have a better system. My brother-in-law rents a dumpster on a monthly
basis for his business. When I have "weeds" I load them in the back of my
trusty Suburban (when no one is looking) and haul to his dumpster. It's a
teeny bit more work, but worth it. I know those books will never come back to
school!

Diane Averett/Librarian
Kerr-Vance Academy
Henderson, NC




Good question. I have them piled up behind the checkout desk in my elementary
school library. Teachers do take some but I have seen them left around the
school in various places. My principal doesn't want to throw them out. My
mentor from the board of ed. told me to put them in a black trashbag and ask
the custodian to put them in the incinerator so that no one would see them. I
am at a loss. I look forward to a hit on this one.
Christine
NYC

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