by Terri Kirk, October 2010

I have to admit something that is embarrassing, mortifying, and downright upsetting. I hate reference. I’ve always hated reference. My college professor, bless his soul, loved reference so much that he named his daughter Constance after Constance Winchell, who wrote some guide to reference books back in the 1960s. I should have found that fact charming but it just drove me nuts. I think my hatred of reference began on that class meeting day in 1978.

It’s not the things in reference that I hate so much. I love digging through books or databases to find the answers. There’s nothing I like better than a brand new set of encyclopedias, especially the beautiful new spine covers of the World Book.

What I hate about reference is that it seems to be a waste of money. Today, with everything that we need available on our cell phones, a book that can’t be checked out of the library seems ludicrous.

I decided the best way to use reference is to get rid of the reference section. I know that doesn’t seem to be nearly as dramatic as going Dewey-less as some school libraries are doing, but it did feel a little covert. I removed some books and I put the others into the circulating collection. Which ones “lived” and which ones “died?” Keep reading to find out.

THE BIG WEED

I began by weeding heavily. I’ve always prided myself with my ability to weed my regular collection using the MUSTY guidelines (Misleading information, Ugly, worn copies, Superceded by another, Trivial, Your collection has no use for the materials). Somehow it didn’t seem quite right when I dealt with reference.

I began with the Dewey number 000. I removed most of the books that dealt with statistics that could be found online, such as any country books that the World Factbook at www.cia.org could replace. Books of maps are nice but the ones I had were out of date. I debated whether the maps could be used as historical data but, in my six years teaching at this high school, the social studies teachers had never requested such information.

Many books in the 300s were easily weeded as I had much newer ones in the circulating collection. I did keep the books on the American government and put them on a table to be relabeled, re-cataloged, and re-shelved.

Every student in our school received a MacBook this year, complete with a dictionary so guess where the dictionaries went? I did keep the unabridged one on my dictionary stand as well as several thesauri. I kept all the foreign language dictionaries.

The next shelves were the science and technical books. Many of those were out of date and I tossed them easily. Others were illustrated with black and white photos and the information could be found on the Internet in full color. Many others were still current, the illustrations were lovely, and the books were in good shape. Those were added to the table.

The art books were easy. If the pictures, drawings or photographs were in black and white and the originals were color, I got rid of them. The sets of music encyclopedias had not been touched except by me when I moved them to dust.

I had lovely sets of critical analysis of American and British literature. I had biographical dictionaries of all sorts. None were ever used. In 1989, Kentucky went through an education reform that encouraged teachers to give assignments that represented real-world activities. Slowly English teachers quit doing the critical analysis type research papers in favor of more problem-based research. In the last six years, we had not cracked the spines on those books. I weeded those books as well, as much as I hated to. The books that were specific to one author also got the boot. If there were four books on the works of William Faulkner, for example, I thoroughly examined them and kept one. They were added to the stack on the table which by now had grown to two tables.

History books were a little harder for me since I love history. I decided to be as critical of them as I was of the other sections. Our American History curriculum begins after the Civil War and the World Civilization begins with the Renaissance. If there were multiple books on the periods not covered in class, I kept the best ones to be circulated and discarded the others since our AP class does cover the entire U.S. historical age. The others were weeded with the same criteria as I had used earlier. I went back to my MUSTY guidelines and used my head instead of my heart to decide which books could stay.

WHAT MADE THE CUT

So what did I end up with? I kept two sets of encyclopedias, several specialty dictionaries, two books of quotations, and one set of decades books now set aside in a small reference section. I put about one fourth of the original reference section into circulation and the others were disposed of according to our district policy. The bottom line is that the books that are left are ones that will be used by the students and the library is cleaner and neater without the old ones. The shelf that contained the reference section was moved out which allowed me to spread the tables out in the library.

My reference collection now contains attractive books that can be easily found. I will update the collection without feeling guilty about using the money for something that doesn’t get used. I can now say I love my new reference section!