Last year I was new in my libraries, and, like you, my libraries had not been weeded for decades. I found it was helpful to utilize some online collection development services (several book companies will now analyze your collection online). I used Follett's Titlewave for analysis. This software offered guidelines for age sensitivity and provided lists of aged titles. It also showed estimates of about how many books each Dewey category should contain for the size of my libraries.

Of course this didn't give me all the answers, but it did give me a list to start from.

What we called the "Dusty Books List" (List of items which have not circulated in the last year) can really help you pick off the low hanging fruit -- things that it's clear either don't belong in your collection, or need a heck of a lot more promotion! Your LMS should be able to collate and print off a list -- arranged by shelf order (classification for NF & alphabetical for fiction).

Pulling the books for evaluation is a great task to give to student library assistants. Divide up the list & get them to search out the remote areas of the library. Then you can review their catch.

You'll also find (or more accurately, not find) a lot of missing titles during this process. Consider these (cautiously) for repurchase -- stolen items are often popular ones.

As you go through, start putting together some 'weeding rules' for each section, based on your own experience. e.g. Computer section, weed anything older than 5 years; Biology, pull anything older than 7 years & review with Biology teacher.

The two sources I mostly have used are:

Collection Development Training from the Arizona Libraries, Archives, and Public Records http://www.lib.az.us/cdt/

and the Crew method from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/

For my guidance you can also look at Awful Library Books: Awful Library Books http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/

Those are good starting points to get a feel of what you should weed and why.

Weeding non-fiction for accuracy and political correctness is always a safe and practical choice despite funding issues. When you can prove that you need current items, you have a clear and winning arguement for why you need funding to maintain a relevent collection My favoriate items to weeded in non-fiction to prove this point so far are:

The Dictionary of Negro Biography - copyright 1980

History of the Negro Rights Movement From 1900 to Present - copyright 1960-something (in this book Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not dead yet)

Complete Equesterian Health Manual and Horsemanship Guide - copyright 1977

Keep a few of the worst offenders to pull out when an administrator or teacher or parent questions your weeding. They do tend to back off when you show them the office education book that shows only typewriters or the space book that is still talking about 1980's technology. The worst comment I ever got was from a curriculum coordinator "but good teachers will correct the out of date information."

The entries are a bit dated, but Sunlink's Weed of the Month can still provide some guidelines for weeding specific sections:

http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/weed/default.aspx

One of the hardest things I've found about weeding is knowing that funding to replace out of date books tends to be minimal at best.

Because of that, I generally do a light weeding rotation that takes a year or two to complete to get through the entire library--it's naturally taking less and less time to go through as more books are pulled--and choose one or two sections a year to do a heavy weed on. This section is then replaced as much as possible with that year's funding.

Books you will probably need to get rid of: All your computer books, old almanacs and other references, dinosaur books that mention brontosaurs, books about extinct animals that weren't extinct when the books were written, most of your health section, most of your music section, books on space exploration that don't mention the shuttle or the space station, and a positively terrifying amount of your 900's. Any biographies of deceased people that meet the "I've (the librarian) never heard of them" criterion are fair game.

Above all, don't be afraid to be ruthless: your library, if it is like mine was, could probably lose at least a third or more of its books and be all the better for it.

Oh, and one hint: when weeding the 800s and the reference section, I recommend wearing a dust mask. (One could plant potatoes on some of those reference books.)

The first step is exactly what you did. Ask for help from people who know. Some sections are weedable even if you do not know them. For example I just agreed to weed the library in my synagogue and so obvious titles to go were The New Antisemitism which was published in 1971 (that is now the old or at very best medium Anti-Semitism) and books dealing with the current plight of Jews in the Soviet Union (we are looking for books on the Russian Jewish experience as a whole now). Use a little common sense and you can figure them out. There are going to be books that are to "professional" for you to know the answer but you will be surprised how many books make it easy. And also don't forget to check circ records (a book that has not been checked out for 40 years becomes a good candidate for weeding) and general appearance to.

The rule of weeding that I follow is no information is better then misinformation.

Hope that helps.

Also, as you're weeding, keep in mind books that are circulating well but have outdated information in them; you'll want to order updates on those and weed what you currently have when the new editions come in.

Most of all though, don't be afraid to weed. If it needs to go, it needs to go. Some librarians like to hang on to as many books as they can, but then that's just more clutter to sift through. Sure, there may be that one patron who needs that book on Ukrainian aquatic basket weaving, but the likelihood of that patron coming in your library: next to none.

You folks are way too scientific with all the checking catalogs and collection development sources. If you do all that you won’t have time to pull many books from the shelf. Use your professional judgment. Look at the physical condition of the book, check the publication date and publisher, flip through the pages, and look at the table of contents. Assume you will make some mistakes and don't worry about it.

Take out anything you think should go. Keep them on a separate section of shelves (in the back room, if you have one) and arrange them roughly by the subjects taught at your school (math, American history, etc.). Three or four times a year tell your faculty that you have pulled 75 books from the collection and ask them to review before you discard. Few of them will and then when they complain that their favorite item is gone, you can remind them that they had a chance to look at what was going. If any faculty comes to look, this is a great time to ask for suggestions for better titles to add (as you have funds).

As for replacements, purchase paperbacks that will be used over hardbacks that sit on the shelf. Also, I spend several thousand dollars a year buying "used" books from Powells.com (notice if they say “student owned”). The books I get from them are in about the same condition as they would be after one use in my library and they are a lot cheaper than new.

Sunlink now has weeding infor for 2009 http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/weed/ByDate.aspx

Also try the book Less is More: A Practical Guide to Weeding School Library Collections written by two librarians from Sunlink

I'm now at my second school library, both of which have very outdated collections (as in average age of more than 20 years). At my first school I was the only staff member, and I found that the most efficient way for me to weed was to put aside any obvious "tossers" as I found them (or students brought them to me), then do a more detailed weeding as I did inventory. (If you're at a school that inventories the entire collection each year, you might want to draw yourself up a 10 year plan as to which sections you will concentrate on weeding and rebuilding each year). That at least allowed me to only have to read up on and think about a couple of areas at a time (perhaps you might find it easiest to start in an area that reflects your undergrad degree).

Also: Thank you to Wendy for the notice about the update to Sunlink!

I think there should be a three-part process:

1. Look at the publisher. Is it a reliable publisher? A university or one of the reliable publishers like Penguin, Viking, Random House, etc.? If not, maybe it's not worth your time.

2. Look at the author--who is he and how did he become an expert on the topic he's writing about? Are his credentials or real-world experience credible?

3. Look at reviews--how have other people responded to the book and what background info have reviewers dug up about the book? Do their responses and the book's context make it seem more or less reliable?

To the above, I would caution... while outdated books (such as the encyclopedia from 1913) can be fascinating, they do not belong on the shelves of a school library. In a public library, they may find a place in a special collection or archive. For the most part, though, I think those books need to be saved for academic libraries, used book stores, and digital collections.

Here is a non-librarian comment (fiction and non-fiction): I belong to the King County library system and am often frustrated that books from previous eras are no longer available. Yes, that biology book from the 50s or 80s is obsolete for today. Yes, Helen MacInnes has been dead for a long while. Yes, there is no more Soviet Union. However, weeding out such books takes away the ability to read about what perceptions society had at that time. Of course, I am a fan of historical context, and I know that most students don't know enough to realize when a book's information is old (unless it pertains to computer and phone systems). With the ubiquitousness of cell phones, it is fascinating to me to read a suspense novel from the late 50s and to realize that at that time, one may have had to drive for miles to get to a town large enough to have a public phone (what the heck is is a public phone, may ask today's child), and how much differently the story would have gone had the bad guys been able to have real-time information on how their plans had gone wrong. It has also fascinated me over time to have look at an encyclopedia from 1913 and an economic geography text book from the 50s and to see how much room they have for some topics that modern such books wouldn't have because there was so much other information that needed to be included.

Definitely you can save interesting old things but not keep them in the regular collection. I've got a great science book from 1960 that has a marvelous chapter on the possiblities surrounding video taping shows off of television. Did you know that there might even be stores someday where you can rent your favorite shows or movies??

You don't necessarily need to be an expert to weed non fiction. Look at content, try to find a specific fact or term you would expect to be in the book or not to be there if it were current. For example, I just chucked an education dictionary from 1959 - refers to "mogoloid children." Format is also important. Is it something that a current student would want to look at? Is it used frequently in your curriculum? I have several older case law books that I've kept because they cite earlier court decisions that aren't necessarily discussed in current books in much detail.

A good title to get for school library weeding is Less Is More: A practical guide to weeding school library collections (Baumback and Miller, ALA 2006). I've found it gives a good overview of what to keep and chuck in most sections.

I've weeded a goodly number of books in the last several years, same reason as you. My school library dates to 1882, and I have books from nearly that long ago! Oldest one was a copy of Shakespeare's Henry VI, printed 1884, entered into the collection January of 1902.

www.nahslibrary.org

Weeding Non fiction... I am doing just that in the children's section of my library. 1)I have asked the powers-that-be to run a list of all non-fiction books from 1999 and earlier that have not gone out this year. 2) condiion of book: old, tattered, torn, shabby, worn & tired looking. 3) Accuracy of information. the computer, medicine, technology, "new" devlopments and inventions always need updating.. Basically, anything from the previous century that needs updating or getting a current copy of for library use.

I would hold off on weeding sections where experience is useful--picture books, folk tales, fiction, and poetry are all sections where it's hard to know what is a gem and what is a dud, or what is written by a local author that you might want to hold onto much longer than usual.

But other sections are easy and should be tackled quickly--astronomy, country books, etc. Anything where incorrect information is going to lead a child astray no matter how much good information is in there with it.

Weeding a really old collection is incredibly satisfying. I got to weed my sons' school library back in the late nineties where they had a book talking about how we might someday land on the moon, and another on Vietnam that predated the Vietnam War. Getting rid of stuff like that is really, really fun.

This has been a very interesting discussion. I have been discarding books for eons and it really doesn't get easier especially since I have been in my library so long that I have almost purchased everything left.

I always find the non-fiction the easiest as there is a prescribed formula for most of it...I have trouble going through the Poetry collections and of course the fiction and picture book is always hard.

Do I get rid of John Bellairs because no one seems to be reading him this year? What about Steven Kellogg or Marcia Brown. These are all good writers and it becomes more important for us to share these titles with children so they don't get lost in the shuffle of new things.

There are so many older titles that are great but they don't get read. So many titles and not enough time to read all of them. I have been very vicious over the last ten years.

What do you do with all of these discarded titles? I hate to throw books away. I have sent them to Thailand and Africa. I have given them to hospitals and Nursing homes. I put them out for students and staff. I have posted them on freecycle. I have given them to friends to sell at their tag sales and I have coved them and used them at the beginning of a new section as shelf signs AND still I have boxes....to get rid of. I even saw some furniture built with old books, glued together.

So what to do with those left over titles????? Not sure if this is a new question or a continuation of the weeding one.. Help!!!!!