What to do with the weeded books?

During our secondary library weed, the ES librarian and I decided to weed our professional library as well.  We now had several thousand weeded books.  What to do with all those books?  A few ideas below....

BOOK ART

The middle school art class made these amazing creations which are now on display in our library.

	We keep all our thicker books in a box in the back room so art students can practice carving as they work towards a final creation.

BOOK TEA
We hosted a book tea for teachers and staff.  We worried we would be challenged for giving away so many "good" books.  But, teachers were grateful.  Students also took books.  Once Chinese student came by and took every book on China we had weeded.  Some staff members shopped for Christmas for their families.  The book "Too Cool to Get Married" was put in a teachers' mailbox by a fellow staff member and is still circulating around the school as a joke.

Other things we did with our books:

1. Our high school Service Learning groups took boxes of books for their organizations (orphanages, schools, etc.)
2. A parent working for an international aid organization took many of our fiction books for libraries she is helping to set up throughout the country.
3. One of our secretaries has parents who run a school and she took several boxes of books
4. Last Resort: Once we gave away everything we could, whatever was left went to our general services office.  They sell them in bulk at an auction where they are then resold or recycled.

Asking For It by Louise O'Neill

(Image from: Amazon.com)

Asking For It won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and I'd been looking forward to reading it for awhile.

Emma is a beautiful eighteen year old in Ireland.  After a party, Emma's parents discover her on the steps of their house bleeding and disoriented.  Emma can't remember what happened the night before and then pictures of the evening start emerging on social media and a criminal investigation is launched.  This story digs into the effects of rape and public shaming.

Asking For It made me think about these issues from multiple viewpoints.  I found the main character in the story unlikeable, which made me question a lot of things that happened in the story.  It was an interesting read.

A word of warning for those considering reading Asking For It: this is a disturbing book with mature situations/subject matter.

Find Asking For It in our library at: REALISTIC F ONE

Weeding Books

The first step in the gentrification process was to weed books; a difficult process for a librarian!

I decided to run a report of books that were more than 10 years old and had not checked out in over 2 years.  The results returned 5141 books. 

We didn't weed them all, but we looked at every book on the list and weeded the majority of them.

Did we "judge a book by it's cover?"  Absolutely!  We also looked at if the pages were dusty, moldy, if the pictures and images looked boring or even if the text looked boring or too hard.  I kept a couple old "Readers Digest" photojournalism books and a few classics.   I also kept about half of poetry to avoid decimating the section. However, for the most part, our weeding list was accurate and we could see why the books hadn't checked out and likely never would have.

I tasked my assistants with the weed of our "Bangladesh Collection" because even though the majority of it rarely circulates, I didn't want to throw out any historical relics, popular authors or books that can't be replaced. They were the experts in this area.

Our library collection has now shrunk in size.  We have 12,455 books, down from approximately 17,000 we started the year with.

Mr. Shoyab and "The Ream of Weeding"

Ms. Shuborna pulling old books

Me with one of many wedding carts

Things got a little backed up at times...

Why Genrefy?

Last year, we genrefied the fiction section of our secondary library.  This is becoming quite common in secondary libraries and we have seen an increase in fiction circulation.  The students love that they can find a book that interests them quickly.  They even helped with the process of labeling the books!

We are now in the process of genrefying the nonfiction section in our secondary library.  Other common terms for this are "Ditching Dewey" or "Bookstore Model" This was a hard process to start and I almost didn't because it was difficult to find information on doing this in a secondary library and daunting to think of the work involved.

Why are we doing this?  Here are a few reasons:

1. It's very popular in our fiction section; we have seen circulation go up and I'm wondering if the same will happen with nonfiction.
2. Students don't use our catalog.  It's true.  No matter how much I teach them to use it, they don't.    I want to meet them where they are, which means making books easy for them to find without the added step of a catalog.
3. There are many great, high-interest, nonfiction books being overlooked because of their Dewey placement.  

Follow along as I blog about the nonfiction gentrification process.  I'll share materials and our process.  Contact me with questions. Or, if you are at the ECIS Library Conference this February, I'll be presenting there.

The Totally Gross History of Ancient Egypt by Tracey Baptiste

(Image from: Amazon.com)

I love learning about ancient Egypt. The Totally Gross History of Ancient Egypt is a fun and easy read that taught me some new things:

1.  Did you know that bread used to wear down the teeth of ancient Egyptians because grinding wheat on stone meant bits of sand and stone got into the bread?

2.  Did you know if you had a tapeworm you could drink strained pomegranate root to paralyze the worm and pass it out in your poo?

We have a whole series of Totally Gross History books about many different ancient civilizations. Check them out and gross yourself out!

Find The Totally Gross History of Ancient Egypt in our library at: 932 BAP.

By Your Side by Kasie West

(Image from Amazon.com)

I'm a sucker for all Kasie West books.  We just received her new one, By Your Side, in the summer book order.  

When I took this book home to ready, I was at first a little bit unsure of the premise... I was thinking "Really?  Stuck in a library? Is this going to be really cheesy?" I had no need to worry, true to a Kasie West YA romance, it sucked me in and I finished it in two days.

Autumn and "bad-boy" Dax find themselves accidentally stuck in a library over a long weekend.  Will Autumn forget about her almost boyfriend Jeff and fall for Dax?  The setting of this book is not only the library.  Don't worry....they get out about halfway through the book and continue on with with the romance and angst!

Find By Your Side in our library at: ROMANCE F WES

Happy Halloween!

Thank you Ms. Shuborna and Mr. Shoyab for creating our awesome Halloween displays.

Have a spooky Halloween!