The quest to create more room in the juvenile stacks continues. Today's episode includes a late and somewhat dim bulb of brilliance. When I began this project adequately armed with bookends, a wide library truck/cart, and slightly ratty clothes (dust & crawling on the floor), I intentionally left two empty sections at the end of the run. My reasoning was sound in theory, it's always a good idea to leave a little bit of room just in case, but less than stellar in practice. Yesterday, after moving about a quarter of the collection I stopped to survey the titles yet to be moved. Much to my dismay the number of books remaining far outweighed, so to speak, the amount of room left within the designated area of the stacks. I did a quick back shift and created almost another entire section (five shelves), but still only had five empty areas for three quarters of the collection. Doubts crept in as to if it would be enough space to finish the task as planned. Especially when an entire section is needed at the beginning to expand the Newbery section from one to two. I decided to sleep on it and then ask for a second opinion the next morning. This morning it was painfully obvious to me, and to my second opinionated friend, I needed to either back up what I'd done two sections, condense some of what I had already moved, or do both. Since I need to do this right, not fast, I'll do both and still hope to meet a deadline of before Christmas break.
As I was moving books around, I noticed duplicates and triplicates of several older/classic titles such as Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, and Anne of Green Gables. It was a simple matter to move them along with the other books, but a small persistent voice kept repeating something my boss said to me last week. "Have you considered weeding the juvenile collection?" My gut reaction was an emphatic NO! The books are small, they don't take up that much room, there is historical value in many of the titles, and I do not want too. I settled on the truth of "no" and added the quick opinion that I did not feel it was something to be taken lightly and would take it under consideration. The first reaction is one I'm standing by, but I do wonder if it's a mistake not to weed juvenile books with the same cold (yes, cold) thoroughness I use to weed curriculum textbooks.
Generally speaking, it is recommended K-12 curriculum textbooks only be held for five years because it is necessary to have updated materials that mirror what students and student teachers will find in a classroom. In my case, I have a few 1999 titles with the remainder of the collection 2000 forward. Unless I am building a historical textbook collection, older editions of curriculum textbooks are just old. The same can not be said for old juvenile books; hence my hesitation to weed with such narrow boundaries.
Print runs for children's books make it difficult to replace older editions. I was pulling books for a professor today who is using the Anita Silvey title 100 Best books for children. Luckily the book includes older and a few newer titles, but I found we are missing about a half dozen books on the list. I used worldcat and amazon to get isbn's, but a couple of them were out of print in basically every format. If I eliminate the third copy of Mary Poppins, will it be replaceable at a later date? Oddly enough, I just placed an order for second copies of the Harry Potter series. We have had so many individual titles missing, lost, lost and paid, and overdue that when book six came out the decision to place the series on general seven day reserve was made so we would have a copy while they are still available. Now, the newer editions will be placed on general reserve and the beat up copies returned to the circulating collection. Is a second copy of this series that much different than four copies of Winnie the Pooh?
Until I am comfortable making that decision, I will continue to move the collection and make room for new books. Where there's a will there's a way, but not until Monday. Tomorrow is a trip to Columbus for a meeting.
Tags: Children's literature collections, Shelf shifting juvenile books, Weeding juvenile books, Weeding library collections
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