Will be pulling this out the next time someone expresses reluctance to weed
"Weed" as in the verb meaning "to pull old, mangled, outdated, no-longer-popular library materials from the shelves in order to make room for newer stuff."
Not "weed" as in the noun meaning "pot."
So I was going through the juvenile 900s and looking at the books on different countries to pull the ones written before 2000. And check out what I found:
Enchantment of the World Series: Yugoslavia. (copyright 1984).
Wow. Just WOW.
This was purchased in 1994, when it was already 10 years old and ALREADY WRONG. Wanna hear the scariest part? It's been checked out 22 times, with the last time being in 2007. I'd like to see what grade that kid got on his country report. Or I'd like to meet the teacher who assigns country reports on places like "Yugoslavia" and "Czechoslovakia."
That's almost as good as the one time I was weeding the adult 900s in my old library and came across a thick 1988 copy of The Soviet Union Today!
In a public library, old information = wrong information.
The end.
I'm Steph, a librarian and mom of 3 (not sure how that happened). Let's chat books, food, Sumptuous Literary Adaptations, poop, knitting and maybe some crazy Mormon Feminism.
5 comments:
While I was weeding the collection at the juvenile detention center, I came across (among other things) Modern Research published in 1960 and Planning Your Retirement from 1972 (for incarcerated 16-year-olds!), which caused me to curse the Eagle Scout project that undoubtedly brought those gems into the library.
I currently have Alternative Energy Projects for the 1990s on my desk, and I'm actually conflicted, because it has great information on making your own solar panels and other cool hippie stuff that I can't find explained as well in a newer book, but the title's killing me.
Umm...one might say "old information" particulary as it relates to nations or geo-politicial subjects is called history. This is not to say that outdated unused books should not be removed as part of your "weeding" process. Hopefully you are not removing copies of the Declaration of Independance or the Constitution, assuming those can be found in public libraries today.
Awesome! Sometimes it's fun to read books like that, just to see what we used to think of the world. A friend of mine has a set of encyclopedias so old that under the entry about the moon, it says something like, "Someday, man hopes to walk on the moon."
I'd like to see that kid's report, too.
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What if I'm writing a report on old information? And I don't have access to a university library? And Google Books is down?
MBC, yeah. You feel me.
Dad, we did have copies of the Dec of I, but I'm pretty sure I took them down to make room for the Twilight posters. Which the teens promptly stole.
Bridget, I love old encyclopedias too!
Th., if that happens you can come check out the adult 900s in my library. They haven't been weeded in ages.
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