by Pam Harland, January 2018

"One thing I would never be able to do is get rid of a book."

I stare at the teacher from across her desk as she goes on to explain how much she loves books and the huge amount of money the district spent over the last half-century for the books in their library.

I search for my words. She trails off as she sees a look of concern on my face. She has just been hired to take over her school library and is about to enter into our library certification program. We are meeting for the first time.

As I organize my thoughts, I begin to respond to her statement.

Relevant

Weeding is essential to keep our collections relevant. Books as physical objects are no longer valuable commodities to Americans. Classroom libraries overflow as we try to surround students with available books, Amazon delivers faster than a library wait-list, and eBooks are available on our phones. Our school library print collections need to be filled only with books that are relevant and useful to our students today—not the students from five (or fifty) years ago.

Current

A current collection is a changing collection. School libraries are not in the business of archiving. We leave that to our historical societies and the Library of Congress. Even if you have a tiny book budget, keeping old inaccurate books on your shelves is not helping your students. Outdated books distract from the good ones.

Space

We must weed in order to make room for new books and flexible spaces. It may be time to dismantle some of your shelves. If your school is 1:1and students have access to resources via eBooks, databases, and the Internet, examine your rationale behind keeping a physical copy as well.

Reference

It's time to evaluate whether or not your print reference books are useful. This is a great starting point for creating more flexible space in your library. How often are dictionaries used? One of my high school library colleagues told me he opened the dictionary atop the large common-area stand in his library to a specific page and noticed that it did not change in 5 months. No one touched it in that time, much less used it. I have a dictionary on my desk but I still look words up in my browser. How do your students use reference books? They are probably using the Internet to check facts.

Curation

Part of our role in the library is curation. It's important to remember that curation means deselection as much as it means selection. What have you decided not to purchase? What were your criteria? If you knew students would have no interest in using a book, most likely, you would not purchase it for your library. Use that criteria as you weed your existing collection. Would you buy that book today in its present condition?

Legacy

This summer, three new librarians reached out to me and asked for help. They had inherited libraries that had never been weeded before! I called a group of vacationing school librarians to help us weed these collections. We got rid of tens of thousands of books in a very short time. We not only created a more flexible, organized, welcoming space for students and teachers, but we also changed the way the schools saw their previous librarians. While the teachers were initially hesitant about seeing books weeded, they saw the benefits to the space. Suddenly, they realized that libraries cannot be about preserving books, but need to be about curating relevant collections for today's students. What legacy will you leave to your replacement someday?

As I left my meeting with the new librarian, I considered what she understood and took away from our conversation. Did she understand that deselecting books will make her library user-centered and not resource-centered? Ultimately, the message I wanted her to absorb is simple: the library needs to be about the students and how they use information. The library was once all about the books; now it's all about the learning.