One way NOT to weed your collection

Ideally every librarian dreams of having endless amount of space for all of the books in your collection to stay, not to mention lots of reading room, computers, CDs, DVDs, etc. Unfortunately this dream has not come to pass yet. Every so often its a good idea to weed your collection as some books may have been very well loved and are now falling apart or they do not appeal to the changing dynamics of your patrons. Creating reports and handling the books individually and talking to your team of staff is the ideal way to weed. Unfortunately sometimes Mother Nature tries to do your job for you… Frozen pipes that burst are anyone’s nightmare. To tackle this problem of figuring out what books in the collection were lost, patron accounts were created and then transferred into spread sheets so we can theoretically see what books were circulating and if they should be replaced or make room for new authors/titles. The physical repairs of the carpet and wall is an ongoing adventure.

Mother Nature please don’t weed the collection for us again!