Collection Development: Weeding

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North East Library is preparing for a substantial remodeling project to take place between August 23 and approximately the first week of October.  Despite substantial renovations undertaken during the Libraries for All program, the branch requires additional work to consolidate the nonfiction collection (currently divided between the east and west sides of the library with a split at approximately 945), renovate the back room to improve workflow for the circulation staff, and create additional space for books on hold.  North East is one of the busiest branches in the city in terms of door count and circulation numbers and needs these renovations in order to better provide services to its patrons.

In preparation for this renovation, the librarians have been focusing on weeding their collections, especially non-fiction.  One of my projects this summer was to weed the 500s, a project witth several steps.
My supervisor first submitted a request to Central for a “dusty shelves” list—a list of those books that have not been checked out for a year or more.  Central generates these lists at night, as they take substantial computer processing time.  Once this list was created, we sat down to discuss the criteria for weeding.  In general, the books on the dusty shelves list are the first to undergo serious scrutiny as to their appropriateness for the collection.  Other considerations were the age of the book (books older than ten years were also up for scrutiny), the number of other books in the collection covering the same topics, the need to maintain a book on a particular topic in the collection, and the condition of the book.  All of these considerations had to be balanced in an attempt to balance the needs of our patrons with the need to create new shelf space and make way for new materials; particularly due to the upcoming renovation, I was asked to be fairly aggressive in weeding, which undoubtedly colors my assessment of the process.

Back in the stacks, things changed from theoretical to practical.  My first step was to browse the shelves for books on the dusty shelves list, while also checking for older books or books in poor condition.  This was, by and large, the easy part—even if I pulled a book that wasn’t a good candidate for weeding, no real harm would be done by giving it a once-over back at the desk.  I gathered approximately a full cart (three shelves) worth of books over my several sessions of work on this project.

At the desk the real work started.  The process was to scan the book to pull up its record, then check the frequency with which it circulated, the last date of circulation, the number of times it had circulated from North East by year, the number of other copies in the system, the age of the book, and the condition.  It turned out to nearly be two projects, as one of the other things I wound up doing was determining whether a particular book might be better shelved in our easy nonfiction (ENF) collection.  This collection is shelved in our children’s area (while the non-easy nonfiction is interfiled with YA and adult nonfiction in the back), and could be fairly described as non-fiction picture books.  These books are more appropriate for reading aloud to a child than for working on school projects, generally (but not always) lack an index, and often have picture-book style illustrations or photographs.  A book that isn’t circulating in our regular nonfiction collection may well circulate frequently when shelved in ENF, so I found myself checking books with low circulation numbers to see if they might fit that collection better.

Condition was by far one of the easiest criteria to deal with.  If a book had multiple ripped pages, any writing or scribbling inside, or a damaged spine or cover such that it was beyond hope of reasonable repair by our very talented and dedicated group of volunteers, it was a pretty easy call to decide to pull it from the collection.  Exceptions were made (there are always exceptions!) if it was the absolute only book we had on a topic, but if other libraries in the system held a copy that might not be enough to save it.  Some I would set aside to have their acetate covers replaced or torn pages fixed, but there is a limit to what can be repaired.
Age, when combined with circulation frequency and the number of other books on that topic, was also pretty easy to deal with.  Books more than ten years old are always up for scrutiny – if we have a similar but newer book covering the same topic, I would usually weed the older one.  Books that were published or acquired before I was born were definitely on the chopping block (and there were a few of these…)

Circulation frequency and distribution were more challenging.  If a book had circulated too many times (more than about 100), we would take a good look at its condition to see if it was time for it to go; that said, if it was still in reasonable condition and hadn’t been replaced by a more current book, there is absolutely no reason to remove a popular book from the library.  I also used Horizon to check the circulation distribution – if a book had circulated heavily in 2005 and 2006, but had only circulated once a year in 2007 and 2008, it was a good candidate for weeding.  In general, books that circulated less than twice per year for 2008 and 2009 were good candidates for weeding.

I would also check the catalog for other books covering the same topic (both at our branch and elsewhere) by using the subject headings assigned to a candidate for weeding.  Horizon allows you to see how many other books in the system have the same subject heading, as well as what they are; it also displays the publication date and (a few screens in) the libraries that hold a copy.  If the copy I was considering for weeding was the only copy in the system, it might (depending on the above factors) mean that we should definitely hang on to it, but if it was a fifteen-year-old, deeply battered book with more recent works on the same topic in the system, it might mean that every other branch had already gotten rid of their copy and it was time for us to follow their example.

I also found that I had to consult my supervisor frequently to see if there was a reason to keep a particular book; for example, we had many books on biomes that circulated only occasionally.  However, we kept them because the schools nearby that send students to North East frequently have a unit on biomes that requires students to use these books.  We may not need them often, but we need them.

At the same time, it was a bit easier for me to be ruthless when weeding – I didn’t have a great deal of experience with the collection or warm fuzzy memories associated with the books, and so I was relatively psychologically freer to zap books.  I will confess to keeping a few that were particularly cool, even if they might otherwise be candidates; as long as my pile of weeds stayed larger than my pile of keeps, I felt like keeping a few around that were “special” (unique presentation or voice, great photographs, etc.) was a totally acceptable librarian perogative to pull.   “Circ it til it’s dead” was the phrase we used for these.

I also found that I would occasionally differentiate between two superficially similar books.  One particular instance came as I was evaluating two books on “intelligent life in outer space.”  One was about SETI, how astronomers are searching for extraterresterial intelligences, how such intelligences might have evolved, etc., and was generally a very scientific look at how scientists went about researching extraterrestrial life.  The other was a very credulous look at aliens, complete with illustrations of bug-eyed greys and flying saucers.  The second circulated far more often than the first (because let’s face it, aliens are way cooler than extraterrestrial intelligences).  I ended up keeping both of them, reasoning that they were presenting two unique viewpoints on the matter, but I would have been hard pressed to keep the second without keeping the first – even if the first was a good candidate for weeding.  That said, it was definitely a situation where I found my personal beliefs being challenged by the task of collection maintenance.

In general, I found this to be a fascinating and useful experience at making the kinds of decisions that go into building and maintaining a quality collection that supports your users.  It’s evident to me that a solid working knowledge of not only your collection but also your users and their needs throughout the year is necessary in collection maintenance; there were a few incidents where my supervisor chose to keep a book that I had selected for weeding because she knew that every so often a school would need it for a project.  I enjoyed working on this project very much, and found that it was a great way to learn your collection and get a better feel for your users’ needs and interests.

Collection Development: Book Ordering

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One of the first projects I completed this summer was the book order for our uncataloged paperback collection. My supervisor was going to be on vacation for the last two weeks in June, and she left this as a project that I would be able to work on in her absence.

The complete list of titles compiled is attached here:  titletales

She showed me how to use the bwibooks.com site to construct a list. This is a particularly useful site as it aggregates a large number of editorial reviews for books, allows the creation of lists, and gives prices for all books (including the library discount). Over several sessions, I compiled a list of approximately 80 titles that I felt would work well to support our existing collection and serve our patron base.

I had several considerations that I kept in mind while compiling the list. I wanted to include:

  • books for a variety of reading levels within the “chapter book” guideline
  • books of local interest, especially books set in Seattle and in the Pacific Northwest
  • books from a variety of genres and viewpoints to give our patrons a good range of options
  • books that were attractive to both male and female readers
  • books of interest to neighborhood residents (North East is in a neighborhood of Seattle with a large Jewish population and several synagogues nearby, so I wanted to reflect the neighborhood makeup).
  • books that represented a wider range of experiences, including books narrated from an African-American or other minority experience.
  • books that would support my historical fiction booklist (yet to be completed at that time).

Keeping all of these considerations in mind, as well as keeping our “less than $7 except in rare circumstances” price point in mind proved challenging but doable. I’m a heavy reader of fantasy and science fiction and tend to prefer books with female protagonists, so I had to make a conscious decision to put aside those preferences (although I did sneak the Coraline graphic novel in there). The method that worked for me was to search for books with a certain level of reviews (starred, ALA notable, etc.), add whatever looked interesting and met our price point, and then go through the list created to weed things out based on our cataloged holdings; if we already had many cataloged copies or if the book already didn’t circulate, I would generally remove it. At the end of this process, I went through the list again to ensure that it was roughly balanced between “boy” books and “girl” books – or at least between books with male narrators and female narrators.

I included several titles with the specific intention of supporting my historical fiction list, including Archer’s Quest, The Birchbark House, Bud, Not Buddy, The Crow Girl, Dave at Night, Elijah of Buxton, Encounter, The Game of Silence, Iqbal, and The White Giraffe (a few of which are also focused on the Jewish experience and so serve the dual purpose of supporting historical fiction and our local population). I also added several science-based titles (and several more were added by my supervisor), including the Martin Bridge series, various titles in the “Science Solves It!” series, and several books based on the Magic School Bus series; I included these mostly because they were well-reviewed, seemed interesting and appealing, and because (just personally) I think reading and science should go together more often. The Hannah West series is set in Seattle, and so provides local interest. And I included many titles just because they seemed like interesting reads—because the whole point of an uncataloged collection is to be easily grabbable and fun to read.

I really enjoyed working on this project. I haven’t read that many children’s chapter books recently, so it was great to get (yet another) review of what’s out there now and what’s considered “notable” by various editorial sources. It also gave me a lot to think about in terms of how to balance the various needs of my collection, my patrons, and my budget.

Today I (July 16)

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Today I:

  • Observed the toddler storytime (again, African stories in preparation for the African Drumming Workshop on Friday)
  • Staffed the reference desk – I took a phone reference question on whether we carried the “Consumer’s Checkbook”, but I took too long to find it (I have a lot of trouble finding stuff in our periodical collection) and she hung up pretty much the second  I took her off hold.  Not one of my more successful encounters – I really need to sort out periodicals in my head.I also took a phone question from a woman on vacation.  Apparently the rental car ate one of the CDs from the library, and she wanted to know what would happen if she just told us the disc was lost and how much that would cost her – it would have taken her a long time to take the car back to the rental place to get them to extract it, and she’d rather be on vacation (which I thoroughly understand).  My supervisor guided me through the process of figuring out the replacement cost; it’s not as simple as the Amazon price, since we have to then reprocess the item for shelving and circulation.  It would have been $33, not the $18 it is on Amazon, and the patron went huh, okay, I’ll think about that and then I hope she went off to enjoy her vacation.
  • Worked on creating a list of authors who write paranormal romances for our teen librarian, since we have a paranormal romance display up right now and the uncatalogued paperbacks we’ve been throwing on there  have bee pretty well piced over.  It’s time to head into the hardbacks.
  • Went to the meeting of all the children’s librarians.  This was absolutely fascinating, although I wished I had something to do with my hands for most of the four hours; I’m bad at sitting still for that long.  A woman came from the periodicals department to tell us about some of their offerings and techniques for finding them (jackpot!), there was a lot of talk about summer reading and other programs going on at the library later this year, and Susan Hildreth, the city librarian, came to have a discussion with the children’s librarians.  It was a great chance to see the behind-the-scenes workings at SPL and hear librarians talk about what their limitations are right now and what  they’d like to be able to do for growth and outreach.

Today I (July 15)

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Today I:

  • Observed preschool storytime.  We have an African drumming program coming up on the 17th, so my supervisor chose stories and songs about Africa as a tie-in.  We sang the Hippo-Pokey (“You splash right in the mud  and you squish your foot around…that’s how a hippo cools off.”), went on a lion hunt, and made animal masks out of paper plates, crayons, and yarn.  Some of the adults got really into it, and a few kids walked out with some spectacular masks!It can be pretty interesting to watch the dynamics of the kids during storytime.  We’ve been having HUGE crowds, upwards of 80 people each session (which isn’t intimidating to me AT ALL, no indeed…), and it’s pretty funny to watch the energy levels and general wriggliness change during some stories and songs.  My supervisor is very energetic in her presentation, and does a great job of holding attention, but there’s always such a mix of ages and development levels (even though  Wednesdays are intended for pre-schoolers (3-5ish), parents bring younger and older siblings or just drop in with their babies) that it’s hard to keep everybody focused at once.  The little speech she gives to the adults at the start of every session helps, reminding them to try to keep their kids reasonably quiet and not blocking other kids’ views definitely helps – the parents are GREAT about grabbing them when they get particularly het up and taking them out for a bit, or just sitting them on their laps and keeping them there.
  • Worked the reference desk for a while.  Two interesting questions – one woman came in looking for information on and practice books for the TOEFL, specifically for the Kaplan and Barrons books.  We didn’t have any on the shelves, so I put a few on hold for her and put her in line for the very newest 2009 editions.The second interesting question came from an older woman who was writing her memoirs for her kids and grandkids.  She said she wanted to learn about techniques for writing a “holographic” view of events and that The Atlantic Monthly (I think it was this magazine, but I could be wrong) had a special section for pieces written in holographic view every month.  I hadn’t heard of this term at all, so I went through a pretty extensive reference interview to pin down what exactly she meant by this – apparently it’s a way of writing narrative nonfiction that presents everything the character is experiencing at that time, from the level of what they’re eating and wearing on a daily basis, the conversations their having, up to the level of political movements and events that are affecting them and their behavior, but I’m still not quite sure that it’s the most commonly used term for this style.  At any rate, I had taken a class on writing creative nonfiction in college, and we had used the ever-popular and very well-known guides to writing memoir, Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.  I’ve generally seen these two books recommended as THE places to go for memoirists, especially for laypeople who don’t necessarily want to be utterly bogged down in writerly minutia.  So I put them on hold for her, and then copped the ever-popular reference technique of writing down the call numbers and checking out the shelves to see if there was something helpful that I could actually send her home with today.  We had three good books on the shelf – one by Ray Bradbury, one by Norman Mailer (he won two Pulitzers; he must know what he’s doing), and one that was a more straightforward guide to writing narrative nonfiction.  She was very appreciative.Reference work is a LOT easier when you have background knowledge.  Like, a lot.  Thanks, Professor Pei!
  • And sometimes it’s really rough.  A teen girl came up to the desk looking for a music album; we didn’t have it on the shelf so I went to put it on hold for her.  As part of this process, we always double-check to make sure that the method of contacting the patron in the computer is still the best way to get in touch with them.  She had an address in there but was no longer living there, so I asked what her current address was.  She handed over a card from a youth shelter nearby, and I started entering the new address in when the other person on desk tried to confirm that this was her actual living address, not just a mailing address.”Is this your home?”
    “It’s the only home I have.”

    I feel like there are some terms that are loaded with emotional freight sometimes–home, mother/father, husband/wife–and it’s something that I’ve been working on; don’t assume a heteronormative two-parent family structure; don’t assume that a woman who comes in with kids is their mom; don’t assume kids have a mom or a dad at home; don’t assume moms are the ones cooking and cleaning and dads are off earning money; don’t assume kids are siblings; don’t assume they’re at a certain reading level based on their age and appearance.  Don’t assume.  And to some extent we have to ask for certain pieces of information – “Is this where you’re living right now?” – but there are ways to do it that are less emotionally weighted.  I don’t think you ever get it right all the time – I saw long hair on a young patron once and and thought he was a girl and um…yeah, he wasn’t – but I think you have to try to take into account what your words might mean to them if the patron doesn’t fall in line with the easy assumptions.  Everybody’s welcome at the library.  Everyone should be made to feel that way.  We choose our collection to represent our population, and we should choose our words that way too.

Community movie night

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I spent this evening with the branch manager working at a neighborhood movie night.  I wasn’t sure what to expect going in (I love those days when I show up to work not merely unprepared for but in fact completely ignorant of what’s about to happen), but it turned out to be an event hosted at the local elementary school.  A bunch of businesses and other local organizations had booths set up, several of which were passing out free food; boxes were set up to take donations for the food bank; Boy Scouts were hanging around trash collection areas with buckets for compost, trash, and recycling.  I saw a few churches, a few local businesses (mostly of the food-selling variety), either Seattle Tilth or a similar pro-composting organization, a gardening club, a local veterinary hospital, etc.  We jury-rigged a little table that we borrowed from outside a classroom to hold up the Seattle Public Library banner, then put out a variety of summer reading materials and booklists and whatnot.

And then, the stickering.  Hundreds of “I love the library!” stickers were distributed to people young and old.  Highlights of the evening included an eight-year-old jumping up and shouting gleefully that she loved the library when I offered her a sticker.  Indeed, my friend, indeed.  Also pretty spectacular were a couple of toddlers who grabbed an uncatalogued paperback each (one of them got her hands on a Laurell K. Hamilton, which was hilarious in its own special way) and then proceeded to march around the parking lot waving the books and going “Wead!  Wead!  Wead!  Book!  Wead!”, pausing every so often to flump their diaper-clad bottoms down on the blacktop and flip through the book (correct orientation optional) while continuing their chant.  Wead!  Wead! Book!  Wead!

I got to talk to a lot of people I’ve seen come into the library, and it was really nice to be able to do so outside the library walls, in a much less formal setting, in between bites of hot dog and brownie.  A woman told me about her daughter who’s doing an exchange program in Ghana, another asked for Latino book lists (we didn’t have any with, but we do have some at the branch), another woman wanted some British mystery recommendations, and the “I loved Twilight!  Now what?” booklists went like hotcakes.  (Side note: it is always faintly awkward to be asked if I loved Twilight.  Cause um.  Yeah, I didn’t.  I must find a diplomatic way to say this that still validates the asker’s enjoyment of Twilight.)

I would do a couple of things a bit differently next year – I’d make sure to bring more uncatalogued teen books because we had a ton of interest; I’d make sure to bring some uncatalogued board books for all the babies wandering around; I’d have worn better shoes AND not missed my bus and had to walk to work (long story; street fairs wreak havoc on my orderly bus-catching); and I’d have better targeted my book list selection to the people attending.  I’m not very familiar with a lot of Seattle neighborhoods, so it’s hard for me to anticipate who will be at events; I’d picked up book lists for African-American teens, Asian-American teens, queer teens, and Latino children (as well as lists advertising our Begin with Books kits, the aforementioned Twilight-themed list, funny books for kids, picture books dealing with self-confidence, and one other one for teens that I can’t remember).  We got more interest in Latino book lists than I had anticipated, and so it would have been better to have a few more of those on hand, as well as some for adults looking for mysteries and some more of the “sensitive issue” booklists, which I think a lot of people just don’t know about.

It was also a little awkward walking around offering stickers to people (mostly kids).  I tried to approach kids who were with their parents and who looked receptive–sometimes it’s hard not to feel creepy (Psst.  Hey, kid….wanna “I love the library” sticker?  First one’s free.  Heh heh heh.) even when acting with totally clear intentions.

Still and all, I got to make some really great personal connections with people, talked up a bunch of our programs for the summer, and had an awesome time.  I think it’ll be nice the next time I see them inside the library to not just be the person behind the desk but the person who was out at movie night.

Librarianing is fun!  (But my feet hurt.)

Today I: (July 8)

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Today I:

  • Helped with pre-school storytime and tested out a vegetable stamp craft.  We had some donated small rectangles of matte board, a bag of vegetables (carrots and cauliflower and brocolli), and some ink pads, so my supervisor had me try making vegetable stamps by slicing them in half and inking them.  It worked pretty well, although some kids were much more interested in stamping themselves than they were in stamping the paper.  Oh well.  It’s washable.
  • Pulled the first set of books for weeding, checking the dusty shelves list as well as pulling books that were more than about 10 years old (checking the date stamped in the front cover) or were in bad condition.
  • Worked on processing books for weeding.
  • Worked the reference desk for a while.  I had one interesting question today: a woman came in looking for a book that had been made into a movie, about a woman who moved into a retirement community.  She thought the woman was named Mrs. Claridge, so I spent some time checking the catalog, Google, and Amazon for that with no luck, and then she realized that the woman was actually named Mrs. Pelfrey, so I looked for that for a bit, and then by some magical combination Google spat out that it was Mrs. PAlfrey at The ClareMONT, and thus I found her book and movie.  And all was well.  It’s great when patrons gradually remember bits and pieces of things that let you find what they want; it’s like a scavenger hunt through their memories.
  • Pulled books for a special request – my boss had gotten a call from a patron who was stuck at home with two sick little boys, ages 2 and 4, and was desperate for something to read to them to keep them entertained.  So I was sent out to the shelves to dig up books on robots and trucks that would keep little boys busy, so I pulled about ten books (Mike Mulligan, an Eye Spy, a few on dinosaurs…there were surprisingly few on robots that I could find, but then I was just scanning) and handed them over to put them on hold.  It was really kind of fun.  I felt like a personal shopper.

Today I: (July 1)

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Today I:

  • Set up and observed Storytime with my supervisor; I helped set up the room, supervised the sidewalk chalk craft for a while, and then helped put things away since the meeting room would be used tonight.
  • Helped the teen librarian set up the meeting room for a program the teen and adult librarians were putting on that night.  I did not know that librarianing would involve so much moving of furniture.
  • Started work on the weeding project – my supervisor sent in a request for the “Dusty Shelves” list for the call-number ranges I’ll be working on, so Central should shortly send us a list of all the books that haven’t been checked out for at least a year.  Once we’ve got that, I can start pulling books off the shelves and determining what to keep and what to get rid of.
  • Staffed the reference desk for several hours.  There were the usual questions (library card numbers, looking for a three-hole punch, Summer Reading Program signups and turn ins), and then a more interesting one.  A patron wanted to know if a business name was in use, so my supervisor guided me through the process of checking the WA Department of Revenue and the WA Secretary of State websites to see if the name she was considering was already in use.  It was good that she chimed in, because I really didn’t have a clue on where to start with that.  But now I know.

Today I (June 30)

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Today my supervisor took me along to work at another branch that needed coverage that night.  While it was only a mile or two away from our home branch, it serves a very different population – fewer young families and more elderly people or people with limited access to computers or other resources.  We had a woman asking how to get her files off a 3.5″ floppy disk–I hadn’t seen one of those in years.

I staffed the reference desk for most of the evening, but it was a really slow night and we didn’t have a lot of questions.  We had a summer reading program turn-in, which was tricky because I didn’t know where the prize books were!  We did find them eventually.

I also had a tricky reference question that I pretty much muffed.  A patron came up asking for a large book, like coffee-table sized, about Hollywood legends–he was pretty sure that was the title, and he was looking for a specific book, not just a retrospective on famous people in Hollywood or anything.  I spent a lot of time searching around Hollywood, Hollywood legends, film stars, film icons, etc.; I found the subject heading “motion picture actors and actresses” and tried that out; I took him back to the 790s to see if it was on the shelves there; I checked the oversize shelves….no joy.  None of the books we had were what he was looking for, and since he couldn’t be much more specific about the title I wasn’t able to do much else.  The worst part was that he was so apologetic for bothering me (even though I assured him every time that it was our job to help people find things and we were very happy to do it), and I couldn’t find what he was looking for.  It was sad.

Twilight showing

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Tonight we had the long-awaited Twilight showing.  I’d been working with the teen librarian a fair bit on getting ready for it – folding booklists, getting stuff together for the room, planning what she needed to have ready, etc.  We had to do a fair bit to get the room ready – rearranging furniture (she had already stolen couches from several parts of the library so there would be squashy places for teens to stretch out), getting the computer set up and the projector properly positioned and focused, popping popcorn and putting out pretzel sticks, printing up surveys and Twilight quizzes (yes, there were trivia quizzes) and putting out summer reading materials, setting up the book displays, all that jazz.

I wound up sitting at the entrance to sign kids in and give them raffle tickets as they arrived, then spent the first few minues of the movie checking the quizzes to see who had won our grand prize of a set of hardbound books.  The teen librarian also did a drawing for some other summer reading prize books, so quite a few kids walked away with prizes which is always good.

After the movie I helped the teen librarian clean up and move the furniture back.

Things I learned:

  • Twilight is a powerful motivational force in getting teen girls to the library.
  • Popcorn goes everywhere and is a mess to clean up.
  • Library book buckets make adequate coolers for soft drinks when filled with ice.
  • Couches are heavy and obnoxious to get through doors.
  • Twilight does not stand up well to a second viewing, especially when one is sober.