Weeding, Part 1

‘Weeding will increase circulation.’

Really? Any weeding at all? Of course, you need a method to weed properly. The problem is, too many of us were never taught the right method.

Probably the most common method is C.R.E.W. (Continuous Review Evaluation and Weeding) It was developed by the Texas State Library, and gives guidelines of how long to keep materials in various disciplines. Here is a link to a pdf, last updated in 2008:

https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/index.html

There are worse ways to weed, but I’m not entirely happy with it. My gripes with CREW are two:

1. It relies on someone else’s idea of what your collection should be like- not what your library’s readers want.
2. There has never (to my knowledge) been any sort of study to show if weeding by the CREW method makes for a better, more responsive collection. It ‘sounds right’, but we don’t know if it is right.

There is a companion method to C.R.E.W., the acronym ‘MUSTIE’ Misleading, Ugly’ Superseded (new editions have come out); Trivial; Irrelevant; Elsewhere (may easily be obtained elsehwere.)

These are cute, but I’m uneasy about UGLY and ELSEWHERE. I see people reading all sorts of ugly books. I think ugly bothers librarians more than it does readers. I especially dislike weeding an item that continues to get use simply on condition. If the reader doesn’t mind condition, why should the librarian?

And Elsewhere? You gonna pitch your copies of “50 Shades of Grey” because it is readily available? What about LOCKSS? (Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.)

Next time: If CREW ain’t right, what is?


Universal Access

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, will present the webinar “Universal Access to All Knowledge” on September 5, 2012. The presentation is sponsored by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS).

Together with his wife, Mary Austin, Mr. Kahle started The Kahle/Austin Foundation, which supports the Internet Archive along with other non-profit organizations with similar goals. Additionally, Mr. Kahle is the founder of Open Content Alliance, a group of organizations contributing to a permanent, publicly accessible archive of digitized texts.

Registration information:

http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/09052012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
This session will be 90-minutes long, starting:
11am Pacific | 12 Mountain | 1pm Central | 2pm Eastern


Dysfunctional and Codependent

There is a dysfunctional and codependent relationship going on in libraryland. (No! Not ebooks!) I’m looking at you, print books! We’ve shacked up with print books for so long, everybody thinks it’s a common law marriage. And still we won’t admit that this is a “books who hate librarians and the librarians who love them” relationship. Denial.

Let’s look at this crazy relationship:

First of all, our lover turns out to be a hoarder. A&E show got nothing on this loony. Did you ever think maybe there are enough books? How about throwing something way? It’s bad enough that the collection grows like a cancer with what you’ve forced us to buy, but then you get your lunatic relatives to call us up as well: “I’ve got a garage full of textbooks on accounting from the 1950s and 60s. I’d like the library to have them.” Uh uh, Jack. Then, the whole family is trying to lay a guilt trip on anybody who suggests that something has to go. OMG! What about the cultural record!

Secondly, what we do have won’t stand up to a good reading. Oh, sure, try to preserve this stuff that starts falling apart after 3 uses. I think HarperCollins was being generous with 26! No chance replacing it because the stupid thing has gone out of print. OUT OF PRINT! What the hell is that? You end up borrowing another copy and tipping in a bunch of tacky looking photocopied pages. Hey book! Why don’t you just send all your pages in a box?

Then there’s the lack of standard format. Try organizing a library with all the wildly different sizes that Mr. Print Book comes in. Sometimes we end up with the “over there in the BIG area for no good reason” collection. Don’t even talk to me about those 6-foot tall book nutcases. Sometimes we just say, “screw it!” and cram stuff on the shelf any which way…fore edge down–ripping the cover right off at the spine. Whatever. Who cares? We have not even addressed the question of language. It’s like everybody has a different word for EVERYTHING! How are we supposed to be able to read all this stuff? Some books are even right to left. Back to front.

Here’s a good one. You’ve spent $700 on book and then he says, 9 months later, “there’s a new edition. Everything in the old edition is out of date.” Here’s the thing though. You checked. There are a total of 11 word changes and 7 punctuation changes. RIIIIGHT. New edition. $900 this time. This has a variation too: something that looks like a new book altogether, different title, different ISBN, different author even…turns out to be EXACTLY like a book you already have. Word for word.

But with all these crazy rantings, don’t even dare bring up separation. He starts screaming and wailing. “No, baby. Please. Don’t leave me! I’ll be better. I promise.” But it’s just the same old story over and over again. Whole bloody family ought to go in for therapy. That’s all I’m saying. Or maybe it’s time to think about saving yourself. Get out of this relationship altogether. He’s never going to change.

[Oh lord! Have I become like THAT library columnist?]

 


Community Analysis and Materials Use: Do ‘lifestyles’ result in differing use of public library materials?

According to a 1995 study I found  in my files yesterday, Hazel Davis and Ellen Altman studied public library circulation patterns in 10 different communities, with median household incomes ranging from $15,000 to $77,000. They also compared cities number of college graduates, how lively they were to spend money on pets, electronics, furniture, and sporting goods. Over 8 million circulation records were divided, subtracted, twisted and turned. In the end they found: No real difference.

Fiction and AV materials accounted for 2/3 of materials use.  Fiction is about 70% of circulation. Patterns of use for children were similar. Dewey range circulations? Similar!

The study, “The Relationship between Community Lifestyles and Circulation Patterns in Public Libraries” appeared in Public Libraries, January, February 1997. It confirms a similar study made in Indianapolis by Ottensmann, Gnat and Gleeson  “Similarities in Circulation Patterns among Public LIbrary Branches Servicing Diverse Populations.” (Library Quarterly, Jan 1995)

The authors point out that this doesn’t reflect on total use of the libraries, simply that, whatever demand is placed on a library’s collection, the proportion of materials checked out is astonishingly the same. Is this because libraries tend to buy the same stuff? Or that the public wants the same stuff? And what happens if a library starts changing its acquisitions to reflect those differences in demand that do exist?  Good questions all, but for the moment, it makes me question the value of ‘Community Analysis’ that I was taught in library school. And they found a line from John Cotton Dana, 1903:  ‘Like their elders, the children are fond of story books, and select them seventy-four times out of a hundred. Adults read seventy novels to thirty other books.’ The 70% fiction rule seems to be a standard. Is that true in your public library?

Tony Greiner

tony_greiner@hotmail.com

 

 

 


Surplus

Alicia Martin "Biografias"

photo by “Library Mistress” of Alicia Martin’s “Biografias”

There is a remarkable artistic meme happening all over the world in recent years which involves using books as the material for constructing works of art. This technique is probably not new at all, but its occurrence has definitely exploded in recent years. So much so, that I’ve started maintaining a Pinterest board that I call “Books that aren’t books.” These works run the gamut from minute and intimate sculptures carved from the pages of books to massive and menacing art installations.

“Biografias”
photo by Delphine Gimbert

 

In the later category, Spanish artist Alicia Martin excels. Some of her huge installations involve thousands of books wired to mesh infrastructures inhabiting various urban spaces, some giving the sense of the books spewing (being vomited almost or worse) from buildings.

“Contemporaries”

 

Others have a smaller but no less menacing aspect, like so many books reproducing uncontrollably behind walls to the point of over-population, putting one in mind of Star Trek tribbles.

 

“A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…”

 

On a smaller but more mysterious scale, in the past year in Edinburgh, Scotland, an anonymous artist began to secretly leave tiny, book-scarved sculptures in various libraries of the city. Each was accompanied by a card with words of praise for libraries and readers: “A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…” The identity of the artist was never revealed.

Other notable artists of both the carved book and installation form include:

 

Even libraries are getting in on the act, creating Christmas trees out of volumes of the National Union Catalog, and reference desks from stacked books. At my own university, an art student constructed an installation right outside our art library of books he got from the public library – skewered on metal cables.

Skewered Books

The artworks themselves are beautiful and intriguing, but I am more fascinated by the sociology of the phenomenon. What does it all mean? Why is it happening now? Two things I think it suggests. One is a perceived and an actual surplus of books. None of these works could be created without access to large numbers of otherwise unwanted books. The one case I know of, the books came from a library surplus that was headed for the recycling bin. I’m sure many of the other artists got their materials from libraries or book dealers. Public libraries weed their collections regularly to maintain a current and circulating stock. Many large academic libraries, which have heretofore maintained collections seemingly in perpetuity, have begun to draw down their print collections to rely on shared print repositories or digital surrogates.

A second explanation, I think, is that people feel guilty about that surplus. Why are we throwing away books? Aren’t books a sacred commodity? Faced with that sense of guilt, those with an artistic inclination want to make something else useful out of these objects, if they aren’t going to function as books any longer. Sometimes, it’s as though the art is commenting on that duel relationship of surplus and guilt. Books carved into coffins! Books pinned onto cables. Books ejected through a window! These are interesting times we live in. The time of the Internet. The time of the Kindle, Nook, and iPad. Is there still a place for the physical book? We don’t know. And some of us are a little disturbed by the uncertainty.


ALCTS Continuing Education

Upcoming ALCTS Continuing Education Events
http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents

E‑forums:

  • Turning Statistics into Assessment
  • Role of the Profession in Academic Research Technical Services Departments
  • Federal Depository System (in conjunction with GODORT)
  • Library as Place: Making the Library an Inviting Environment

If you have additional e‑forums ideas, please contact Kristin Martin.

Webinars:

  • The Future of the Integrated Library? (August 1)
  • Universal Access to All Knowledge (September 5)
  • Demand Driven Acquisitions: Part 1 and 2 (September 19 and October 3)
  • Digital Preservation: Part 1 and 2 (October 10 and November 14)
  • Principles of Classification (October 24)
  • Holdings Comparisons: Why are They So Complicated (November 28)

Web Courses:

  • Fundamentals of Acquisitions (September 17 ‑ October 12)
  • Fundamentals of Collection Assessment (August 13 ‑ September 21)
  • Fundamentals of Collection Development/Management (August 20 ‑ September 14)
  • Fundamentals of Electronic Resources Acquisitions (September 24 ‑ October 19)
  • Fundamentals of Preservation (September 10 ‑ October 5)

Posted on behalf of the ALCTS Continuing Education Committee.


A library always has information

photo by Horia Varlan

image by Horia Varlan

Information is a dreadful word – stuck somewhere between the  cold mathematics of Shannon and Weaver and the commercial commodification of even worse words like “content” and “product.” But how else do we describe the “content” of a library? “Knowledge” and “data” have special sorts of meaning that don’t always apply to what a library provides. Information is what libraries do. Without information, there isn’t a library.

That is going to strike many in the library profession as an old fashioned, even reactionary view. In recent years, we’ve come to think of libraries and librarianship as a suite of services and activities that cannot be reduced to a dictionary definition about a collection of materials or the location in which the collection is housed. We put up quite a hullabaloo when OCLC published Perceptions of Libraries in 2010, which suggested that when people thought about libraries they thought, “books.” ARRRRRRRGH would generally describe the librarian response in the blogosphere. We don’t want to think of ourselves as the sum of all information in a collection. We’re more than that!

I think there are several explanations for the development of this reaction against “the library as collection.” First, of course, is that the library is largely virtual. It doesn’t exist in a place the way it once did. The fact that the information of a library exists less and less in a physical container suggests that the actions required to access and use information are more important now than the physical embodiment of the information. Then, since information is disembodied, as it were, it is everywhere. People don’t have to come to libraries to get information. It is floating in the air. They can find it on their phone. Our declining circulation numbers attest to this and at the same time give us a sense of doom about continuing to pin our star to “the library as information.”

Of course, libraries have always been a combination of things and actions. We acquire books. We organize and describe materials. We help people find information. We teach people to navigate a sea of data. Sometimes a single person provides all those services. Sometimes there is a division of labor. Sometimes there is conflict and disagreement between one division and another. Each group thinks of itself as the “heart” of the library enterprise.

There seems to be a growing belief that the actions of libraries are more important than the things. A library isn’t information–it is the ability to find information. It is a place that will teach you how to find information. It is a service that enables the provision of information. Maybe it is even a place where people gather to create information. Yes, all of those are true. I embrace all of those visions of a library. But here’s the thing: information is the object of all those actions. They are sentences that are incomplete without “information.” Even in a world where we don’t own or physically hold the information, where all of our actions are directed away from a local collection, information is still the reason we exist. If a library isn’t information or the means to access information, then all of our actions could as easily be ascribed to or performed by schools, businesses, consultants, or other entities. We don’t need libraries in that case.

Because libraries are a constellation of actions that point towards information, we need to continue thinking of information as central to our mission. Otherwise, we are doing something other than librarianship.


Ebooks in K12

Here is an interesting workshop for those in K-12 being offered by ALA Techsource:

“Choosing an E-Book Platform that Works for Your K12 Library”
being lead by Buffy J. Hamilton
August 8
http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=3832&zbrandid=4634


Emerging Research

Don’t miss the ALCTS Collection Management Section forum at ALA

“Emerging Research in Collection Management & Development”

When: Sunday, June 26, 2011 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Location: Convention Center, Rm 269
Papers on interesting topics will be presented.

http://connect.ala.org/node/137991


Collaborative Collection Conference

Collaborative collection development has been on our lips for 30 years. It’s one of those topics that, to paraphrase Mark Twain (or whoever), everybody talks about but nobody does anything. I exaggerate. There have been a lot of what I’ll call prospective collection collaboration: shared subscriptions, buying clubs, cooperative approval plans. But retrospective collaboration is a tough nut. “Retrospective collaboration?” you say. What to do about managing existing collections, especially monograph collections, in a collaborative fashion? How to weed our monograph collections in an extensive fashion (creating spaces for other activities), while still preserving the greatest diversity of the scholarly and cultural record? Now THAT is on my lips all the time these days.

And its on the lips of several great presenters for ALCTS. See this ALCTS virtual preconference to learn a lot more about this kind of collaboration:

Local Collections, Collective Context: Managing Print Collections in the Age of Collaboration
June 4-6: there are three sessions, 90 minutes each,  beginning at: 11am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1pm Central, 2pm Eastern
http://www.ala.org/alcts/events/ala/ac/12/collaborationage

Sign up now! I’ll see you there.