Wednesday 23 September 2015

The Weeding Handbook

Finished September 17
The Weeding Handbook: A Shelf-by-Shelf guide by Rebecca Vnuk

This book is an overview of weeding helpful for the small public library. It begins with an overview of weeding, discussing the purposes behind weeding, the issues around it, and how to get started.
It next goes through a collection by DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification) number, talking about Fiction along with the 800s. For each range it talks about the type of information than gets outdated, and suggests guidelines for weeding books in that area. The book is clear about these being guidelines in many areas, as each community will have its own unique needs and things like space available and budget for collection will impact decisions.
The book then goes on to brief discussions for Reference material, media (CDs and DVDs along with older formats), ebooks, and databases.
There is a chapter about Youth collections which discusses some issues particular to Children's and Young Adult collections.
There is a section on Weeding Gone Wrong, which looks at some examples of bad planning and preparation and the issues that arose due to them.
The book them moves on to Collection Development Plans, explaining why these are a necessity behind every well-planned weeding procedure or project. Some sample plans are included: six for public libraries, two for academic, and one for a school library.
This book covers the main issues, explains the importance of weeding and collection development plans, and provides some helpful tips.

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