THE SEATTLE PUBLIC Library consists of a Central location and twenty-six branches. The branches have roughly one million items, and this in-house document covers general details for weeding in the branches.
Following the branch document is another internal document used at the Central location, the Reader’s Services Department Weeding Guidelines.
The Seattle Public Library withdraws worn, damaged and outdated materials to offer our patrons a collection that is credible, useful, timely and attractively displayed. Presenting an attractive and engaging collection of resources, avoiding overcrowded shelves and hard to reach areas (top and bottom shelves) are all important to the vitality and usability of our branch collections. As part of a system, each branch relies on the greater system collection to meet the needs of patrons.
Weeding is an essential, ongoing assignment in collection development and maintenance. If this activity is deferred or only given cursory attention, weeding activity will need to be focused and intensive until the collection is brought to system-wide standards with shelves no more than 2/3 full, top and bottom shelves are empty. Once the collection meets the standards, it can usually be maintained with a regular schedule. A lot can be accomplished in 20–30 minutes a day or a couple of hours each week. The important goal is that the activity is routine, regular and ongoing.
Because of the range of building capacities, layouts, and shelf arrangements in our 26 locations, each branch has its own challenges and rewards. As a general retention practice, smaller branches (2,000–5,000 square feet) may consider retaining most volumes for up to 2 years, medium branches (6,000–10,000) 2–3 years and larger branches (over 10,000) for 3–5 years—assuming condition and currency of information are sound.
• Step One: Pull for condition.
• Step Two: Pull for date (especially in the areas of consumer health, law, finance and cover-dated materials such as tax guides, etc.).
• Step Three: Pull superseded editions such as travel guides, job readiness resources and annual issues.
• Step Four: Once these steps are completed, then request dusty shelf as the fourth step. “Dusty Shelf” reports are useful for identifying underused resources in a library collection. However, these reports do not identify worn or outdated volumes which are the materials that have the most negative impact on the collection’s credibility and the patron’s experience. For that reason, dusty reports should always be the fourth step in comprehensive weeding activity.
Apply these general principles for all formats:
1. Physical Condition: Materials that are worn, damaged, or soiled are considered unfit for circulation. Faded and unattractive buckram rebinds, yellow, brittle or torn pages or marked pages, missing pages and illustrations (no “Officially Noted” stamps, please) are all marks of poor physical condition. Media items with missing components including cover art, librettos and booklets should be withdrawn. Items in this category can be withdrawn wherever they are encountered. It is NOT necessary to return damaged items to their assigned locations for withdrawal.
2. Timeliness: Out-of-date materials undermine the Library’s credibility and, in some subject areas, can cause serious harm. Dated materials are worse than nothing, not better than nothing. Patrons expect and need up-to-date materials, particularly in the areas of travel, consumer health, and personal investing—all areas that are regularly updated through publishing output and selection activity.
3. Superseded Editions: Retain only the current edition of regularly updated materials such as travel, study guides, consumer legal guides, tax manuals, resume guides, etc. Note: Reference items on standing order should not be transferred to the circulating collection when a new edition is received. The superseded edition should be withdrawn.
4. Duplicate Copies: Multiple copies are purchased when titles are at peak popularity. Once the excitement subsides, duplicate copies on the shelf consume valuable and scarce real estate. Trim to a single copy or withdraw all copies and rely on the holdings of Central and the larger branches.
5. Low Circulation: Withdraw items that have not circulated in a year or show a steady decline in circulation.
6. System-Wide Holdings: Remember that we are a system of libraries with one collection shelved in multiple locations. If your copy is showing wear and tear or space is at a premium, relying on the larger collection is legitimate and necessary.
Most withdrawn volumes and media items in good condition should be directed to the Friends of the Library. Please follow the withdrawal procedures available on InfoNET. Additional information about de-processing items prepared by the Friends of the Library is also on InfoNet.
As most branches are at or near capacity and all branches are actively engaged in collection maintenance activities, surplus copies should not be offered to other branches.
All branches are at or have exceeded LFA-identified shelving capacity leaving only the Central Library with space to accept reassigns. Some 55,000 items were absorbed by Central as part of the Mobile Integration in 2011 leaving some areas of Central strained. TCS will consider reassigning items not needed in your collection if the item is in new or like-new condition and the item is absent at Central or in lost or missing status. Media items should be complete, in good playable condition and with inserts, jacket and librettos intact. Search Horizon before sending items to TCS for reassign consideration. If there are multiple copies on the shelf at locations across the system, consider your copy surplus and send the withdrawal to the Friends of the Library.
Instructions for using the gray reassign slip for sending items to TCS for reassign consideration are available on InfoNET. While the Central Library is not a designated “last copy” repository, the last system copy owned of a title will be considered for reassign to Central if it is judged to have continuing merit and is in satisfactory condition. Indicate “last copy” on the grey reassign slip.
Priorities for weeding: (in priority order)
1. Condition: Watch for curling or chewed up covers, yellowed or torn pages, stains, burn marks and other patron markings, smelly or moldy items, missing pages, broken bindings and worn, dirty and ugly bindings. Also, pull all the books needing new plastic jackets or spine labels. We mend mass paperbacks only if they can be fixed with ONE piece of tape.
2. Circulation: Even unpopular titles at Central have circulated between 12–20 times. However, if an item hasn’t circulated in the past 12–18 months, ask yourself why we should keep it. A Dusty Shelf List report gives you an easy way to start your mending.
3. Duplicates: Central often receives two or more copies of a new title. Sometimes one copy will suffice, if circulation is low. Weed popular title duplicates down to between 3–4 copies.
4. Series books when most titles are missing: TCS views ALL of SPL as one library, so no one branch, including Central, will own an entire series, except in rare instances. When you see one mid-series title on the shelf, it’s a good idea to check the series and see if a) we have other series titles, b) if the series needs to be read in order, 3) if so, do we have in our branch the first one or two of the series and the most recent, and 4) if it’s a well-written and important series we need to keep. Branches owning other series titles may find a better use for a singles series entry languishing on the shelves.
5. Out-of-date older titles: Most popular older titles are worn out or in new editions and are easily identified as of enduring value. Sometimes, however, a pristine-looking older title is really just a shelf-sitter. Be careful as you read titles/authors on the shelves. If you don’t recognize them as current or important older titles/authors, pull them and check.
6. Obscure authors or authors in less demand: Dead authors who wrote just one book, authors who used to be popular whose books are not circulating anymore, and authors you don’t recognize should all be carefully considered for discard/retention. While we have an interest in collecting local authors, we may discard local titles if they do not meet our criteria for retention (above #1–5). You may wish to consult another librarian to support your decision.
7. Ephemeral titles: These can be books purchased because the author is local, but are poorly written or no longer of interest to our community, tiny books that were funny for a while but not anymore, mass market paperbacks of one unknown author languishing on the shelf, oversize books that don’t look like fiction or look like children’s books and unknown books with mediocre shelf appeal.
8. Last copies may be discarded when they do not meet our standards.
9. If you can’t decide whether or not to discard a book, weigh in favor of discard if it has an “Obsolete” RFid tag.
10. Our goal is to keep our collection weeded to its space, meaning empty bottom shelves and each shelf filled to 75%.
These are priorities to think about as you look at the shelves and anything you wonder about should be pulled for evaluation. If you know the books you pull will sit on your desk/cart for a while, change the item status to “CM” (collection maintenance). If you decide to keep it, remember to check it in! Items sent to menders must have “ME” status. Once mending is done, the librarian judges the quality of the mending and checks in the ones fit for public shelving.
Questions to ask before discarding a book in good condition, but with low circulation:
1. Is it a book we “should” have such as a classic, a well-known author or first in a popular series?
2. Is the book one that would be of interest in our community if publicized?
3. Is it by a Seattle or Northwest author? Is it still of interest to our community?
4. Does the author have other titles at SPL that do circulate well?
5. Has the book been readily available for checkout? Did it come to CEN from another library (MOB) recently? Has it been shelved on the top or worse, bottom shelf?