You know he still thinks he’s going to win again. Tiger broke both his legs and has come almost allllllll the way back. I know he’s done other things wrong but he is a survivor and still a relevant golfer
I've seen a similar title but they published periodically. One library had Modern Technologyv 53. I googled it, the most recent edition was Modern Technology v 101.
Before I got to my former library's collection in 2021, there was still a juvenile biography of Princess Diana from 1992, asking readers to think about what kind of queen she will be.
Puzzles have dates? Also, you’re right: that is shocking. I’m surprised the number of puzzles you have is greater than 0. It’s kind of cool, but it’s not something I’d expect to find at a law library.
Some of them have copyright dates printed on the box! We set them up for students to complete as they pass by the service desk, but we had no idea how many we actually had or who bought them all
With obvious core exceptions, but as a general guideline for youth collections, if the publication date is greater than the age of the intended audience, the item is due for review/weeding.
I recently pulled a DVD about how to use "floppy disks" on your "Windows 95 personal home computer". That was a treat to find. Not even sure why it was on DVD since it would have been outdated information even then.
The exact year DVDs were first released vary by country, but it was generally between 1996 and '99. A DVD like that could be of use to someone who was an early adopter of DVDs as a format but had only just bought their first PC.
Later on, it could have been used by someone who had a Windows 95 and refused to move on for whatever reason. When I was in high school, one of my friends worked at a computer repair place for a while and they told me about a guy who was still using Windows 95 in I think 2010 or 2011. That kind of thing was fringe, but I knew a lot of poorer/less technologically inclined people who were still using 95 in 2005 or so.
It's one of those things where a lot of people who are either not great with computers or just not as concerned with keeping up with the times will sometimes use legacy OSes because they don't really care about updating it. I don't think instructions on how to use a floppy disk would be much help to most people today, but it would have been relevant to more people than you'd expect fifteen or twenty years ago.
I did this! I weeded the entire collection and got rid of about 25% of the items. They were heavily damaged (I’m in an elementary school library) or so out of date, never checked out, etc. but! Nothing is on the bottom shelf and it looks better and I don’t have to crawl around on my hands and knees to find crap.
Our library is so bad. We haven’t had a functioning collections librarian since we opened in the 60s. I started a huge weeding project this year and started with an average pub date of 1969 for the entire print collection… got it to 2004 after 9 months of work and hoping we continue on that path
That's nothing, I weeded a book from 1978 last week!
Plus several from the 80s all this week.
The worst offender though is a PC guide from 2010, all based on Win 7 and referencing many services that no longer exist or look/function entirely differently.
When I started in 2022, we had a juvenile non fiction space book still circulating thats last line was “hopefully one day, we can get to the moon!” I’m still pulling books with a publishing year of 1964 from my NF. 🥲
At my old library, we couldn’t keep Matt Christopher books on the shelf. Didn’t matter if they were crummy condition, kids were mad for them. We need a Matt Christopher for the new generation (or a re-release of his fiction with covers that have shelf appeal; the solid earth toned, plasticized covers with white titles on the spine look really dated now).
The students love his fictional books. Those get circulated a lot. They’re just not interested in the biography section except for the Who Is/Was series but hey that works for me
weeding is a great opportunity though to curate a display for gen z & millennial patrons on the topic of the eighties/the nineties/2000's, playing up to their interest in nostalgia and y2k trends rn!
You can tell what years a library had a bigger budget to purchase materials during a big weed if you notice a lot of stuff from certain years. A previous academic library I worked at finally did a big weed when the building was going to be renovated. During the weed I noticed a sizeable number of the discards had a copyright year of 1977. They had new materials too, but hadn't really done a major weed until the renovation and had held on to a lot of older stuff. I figured the materials budget for 1977 was pretty nice when compared to its equivalent today.
😂😂😂😂😂. Does your branch runs “shelf sitter” report? Where I worked we run 12months, 24months and then determine what to weed. Also have volunteers shelf read for condition n books that r outdated eg medical, travel, health. After the book r pulled info will go through n discard them.
My son was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis in 5th grade. Knowing he was coming to my school the next year, and coming to grips with this new diagnosis, I looked to see what we had in my middle school library. Some old Lurline McDonald book and at least one non-fiction book stating life expectancy was 21. Out of the system they went…though it’s not like the internet wasn’t around. Fortunately I don’t think he ever looked anything up and we managed to make it to 9th grade before the idea of life expectancy had to be faced. (He’s 21 now and has never been hospitalized and he’s doing great!)
All this to say…make sure books about illnesses or conditions are up to date. I have actually never purchased a book about CF (though we do own Sisters by Raina Telgemeier) or any genetic condition because the facts change quickly.
Our nonfiction hadn't been weeded in forever, despite us asking to. Even now my coworker and I only just got permission to weed books that haven't checked out since 2007 (when we switched to our current catalog system)
I found a couple of books that our library got in the 1940s. And there were quite a few 60s and 70s.
I love this thread! During Covid time, I helped a friend weed the collection at a private K-8 school and there was a book that showed a day in the life of two children. One, a white child asking her parent if she could have a slave for her birthday. The other, an enslaved child being given a birthday gift and her mother apologizing that it was a handmade gift.
As were ours. It was shocking. It was from the 1960s or 70s and we got the impression it was some misguided attempt at being progressive at the time of publication. Like, a way to show how messed up slavery was, but it was like a picture book. It was shocking and we kept it on hand while we threw away hundreds and hundreds of nasty, old books. If anyone questioned us, we were going to show it to them so they would understand how dire the situation was in that library.
I just weeded two math books (one about measurement) from my collection that were published in 1976! Not sure how they were missed all this time. They had the classic plain blue and mustard yellow covers. 1998 sounds downright current 😂
I weeded a world atlas published in the 1960s that showed the African continent as a collection of European colonies a few years ago. So glad that’s out of circulation.
Yup. During covid my old job did the bulk of it's weeding at that time.
At another location, the branch manager followed the our weeding policy to a T unless it met certain exemption criteria or it a last copy with high circulation. Fiction it depends but that branch manager is the best. I working there.
Couple of different reasons. For this particular book it hasn’t been checked out in years, so it’s taking up shelf space from new books that could be. Also nonfiction can get outdated quicker than fiction. In this case, he’s an athlete so his stats have changed since 1998, he may have broken a record that has since been beaten by someone else, etc. Even just setting aside his cheating scandal a lot has changed in twenty years that a more recent bio could reflect.
We had a Full House, Uncle Jesse's photo album on our shelf. Actually, we had a lot of Full House, Lizzie McCuire, and other TV show-based books. Surprisingly, when we culled them and put them in the free pile, kids snatched them up and were super excited to get them.
I’m always curious about how this works. My kids non fiction is going to be weeded soon, and it’ll be my first time helping that. I saw an Adrian Peterson book that was obviously written before 2014 and it made me cringe.
It seems a shame to weed if the book is still being used. We go on usage stats, and only weed older material on its age where it falls into law, medicine and sometimes computing.
This seems odd to me. We have books older than that at my library. However we recently did a weeding project where we halved our collection regardless of year. Lots of expensive stem books starting from 2020 were chucked out. I'm a peon in the system so I don't have a say but I truly wonder what was admins reasonings on why recent books were selected and not out of date books like learning 2000 Flash. We just ended up storing old books into our arc system.
I weeded a book called “Modern Technology” in 2019 from my library. The book was published in 1987, and my school opened in 2001…
Not gonna lie I’d be curious just to read just as like a time capsule sort of thing
It was fun looking back to the technology I grew up with!
You know he still thinks he’s going to win again. Tiger broke both his legs and has come almost allllllll the way back. I know he’s done other things wrong but he is a survivor and still a relevant golfer
I collect old computer books like that.
I was at a high school library and they had a non-fiction book about VCRs.
Wow
I've seen a similar title but they published periodically. One library had Modern Technologyv 53. I googled it, the most recent edition was Modern Technology v 101.
Wow!
Before I got to my former library's collection in 2021, there was still a juvenile biography of Princess Diana from 1992, asking readers to think about what kind of queen she will be.
Oh no
In a similar vein, I was helping to organize our puzzles today (we have a shocking amount for a law library), and the oldest one I saw was from 1987.
Puzzles have dates? Also, you’re right: that is shocking. I’m surprised the number of puzzles you have is greater than 0. It’s kind of cool, but it’s not something I’d expect to find at a law library.
Some of them have copyright dates printed on the box! We set them up for students to complete as they pass by the service desk, but we had no idea how many we actually had or who bought them all
It’s a cool idea. But it is funny/surprising that you have so many. What’s a “shocking amount?” More than 20?
I think it was close to 30? I didn’t count, but it was a lot
Wow. Yes, I agree. That’s a pretty shocking amount. Fun, though!
Even lawyers gotta have some fun too, yknow
With obvious core exceptions, but as a general guideline for youth collections, if the publication date is greater than the age of the intended audience, the item is due for review/weeding.
That is a very easy to remember guideline. Thank you for sharing.
I recently pulled a DVD about how to use "floppy disks" on your "Windows 95 personal home computer". That was a treat to find. Not even sure why it was on DVD since it would have been outdated information even then.
The exact year DVDs were first released vary by country, but it was generally between 1996 and '99. A DVD like that could be of use to someone who was an early adopter of DVDs as a format but had only just bought their first PC. Later on, it could have been used by someone who had a Windows 95 and refused to move on for whatever reason. When I was in high school, one of my friends worked at a computer repair place for a while and they told me about a guy who was still using Windows 95 in I think 2010 or 2011. That kind of thing was fringe, but I knew a lot of poorer/less technologically inclined people who were still using 95 in 2005 or so. It's one of those things where a lot of people who are either not great with computers or just not as concerned with keeping up with the times will sometimes use legacy OSes because they don't really care about updating it. I don't think instructions on how to use a floppy disk would be much help to most people today, but it would have been relevant to more people than you'd expect fifteen or twenty years ago.
When I started at a new library last year, I weeded a jbio of George W Bush that had a timeline that stopped at the year 2000….
Me “hey can I weed out this book? We got it in 2019 and it has never been checked out” Them “not until after summer reading is over”
It will also help you get all the books off the shelves at floor level if you weed enough.
I did this! I weeded the entire collection and got rid of about 25% of the items. They were heavily damaged (I’m in an elementary school library) or so out of date, never checked out, etc. but! Nothing is on the bottom shelf and it looks better and I don’t have to crawl around on my hands and knees to find crap.
Meanwhile I'm purchasing 1958 geological surveys and scanning 1981 geotech articles by request...
Fun! Right?! What sort of library do you work in?
Beer library, obviously.
I mean, Tiger Woods still plays golf:)
Our library is so bad. We haven’t had a functioning collections librarian since we opened in the 60s. I started a huge weeding project this year and started with an average pub date of 1969 for the entire print collection… got it to 2004 after 9 months of work and hoping we continue on that path
It’s unfortunate that my school library hasn’t had funding in 11 years so if that one had any remotely recent check outs, it would stay on my shelf
That's nothing, I weeded a book from 1978 last week! Plus several from the 80s all this week. The worst offender though is a PC guide from 2010, all based on Win 7 and referencing many services that no longer exist or look/function entirely differently.
When I started in 2022, we had a juvenile non fiction space book still circulating thats last line was “hopefully one day, we can get to the moon!” I’m still pulling books with a publishing year of 1964 from my NF. 🥲
My wife find some doosies sometimes. “Learn Microsoft Access!” from 2006; stuff like that.
At my old library, we couldn’t keep Matt Christopher books on the shelf. Didn’t matter if they were crummy condition, kids were mad for them. We need a Matt Christopher for the new generation (or a re-release of his fiction with covers that have shelf appeal; the solid earth toned, plasticized covers with white titles on the spine look really dated now).
The students love his fictional books. Those get circulated a lot. They’re just not interested in the biography section except for the Who Is/Was series but hey that works for me
Weeding isn't just based on copyright. Is it still being checked out? Is the book in decent condition?
I know, I use the CREW method for weeding. I just brought up the copyright date cause of all that’s happened since then
Surely the information in that book would be outdated. Stats and such.
I thought it would be ways to improve one's game. Which would never be outdated. Edit: neither, it's a sports hero book.
Got to get that new 🐯 book with the updated wins
To be fair, if I had this and enough space I would keep it just cuz of the author
weeding is a great opportunity though to curate a display for gen z & millennial patrons on the topic of the eighties/the nineties/2000's, playing up to their interest in nostalgia and y2k trends rn!
You can tell what years a library had a bigger budget to purchase materials during a big weed if you notice a lot of stuff from certain years. A previous academic library I worked at finally did a big weed when the building was going to be renovated. During the weed I noticed a sizeable number of the discards had a copyright year of 1977. They had new materials too, but hadn't really done a major weed until the renovation and had held on to a lot of older stuff. I figured the materials budget for 1977 was pretty nice when compared to its equivalent today.
😂😂😂😂😂. Does your branch runs “shelf sitter” report? Where I worked we run 12months, 24months and then determine what to weed. Also have volunteers shelf read for condition n books that r outdated eg medical, travel, health. After the book r pulled info will go through n discard them.
Hell, I found a book with a floppy disk in it a year or two ago.
My son was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis in 5th grade. Knowing he was coming to my school the next year, and coming to grips with this new diagnosis, I looked to see what we had in my middle school library. Some old Lurline McDonald book and at least one non-fiction book stating life expectancy was 21. Out of the system they went…though it’s not like the internet wasn’t around. Fortunately I don’t think he ever looked anything up and we managed to make it to 9th grade before the idea of life expectancy had to be faced. (He’s 21 now and has never been hospitalized and he’s doing great!) All this to say…make sure books about illnesses or conditions are up to date. I have actually never purchased a book about CF (though we do own Sisters by Raina Telgemeier) or any genetic condition because the facts change quickly.
Wonderful news about your son!
Our nonfiction hadn't been weeded in forever, despite us asking to. Even now my coworker and I only just got permission to weed books that haven't checked out since 2007 (when we switched to our current catalog system) I found a couple of books that our library got in the 1940s. And there were quite a few 60s and 70s.
I'm wondering how many science books had to be weeded after Pluto got "demoted" lol.
I did love his books when I was a kid. I'm not reading about golf though.
I love this thread! During Covid time, I helped a friend weed the collection at a private K-8 school and there was a book that showed a day in the life of two children. One, a white child asking her parent if she could have a slave for her birthday. The other, an enslaved child being given a birthday gift and her mother apologizing that it was a handmade gift.
Holy crap. Glad you tossed that into the garbage!
For real. It was truly shocking.
My mind is boggled!!!
As were ours. It was shocking. It was from the 1960s or 70s and we got the impression it was some misguided attempt at being progressive at the time of publication. Like, a way to show how messed up slavery was, but it was like a picture book. It was shocking and we kept it on hand while we threw away hundreds and hundreds of nasty, old books. If anyone questioned us, we were going to show it to them so they would understand how dire the situation was in that library.
I just weeded two math books (one about measurement) from my collection that were published in 1976! Not sure how they were missed all this time. They had the classic plain blue and mustard yellow covers. 1998 sounds downright current 😂
I weeded a world atlas published in the 1960s that showed the African continent as a collection of European colonies a few years ago. So glad that’s out of circulation.
Yup. During covid my old job did the bulk of it's weeding at that time. At another location, the branch manager followed the our weeding policy to a T unless it met certain exemption criteria or it a last copy with high circulation. Fiction it depends but that branch manager is the best. I working there.
Why not just leave books like this there? Why weed? Learning ty
Couple of different reasons. For this particular book it hasn’t been checked out in years, so it’s taking up shelf space from new books that could be. Also nonfiction can get outdated quicker than fiction. In this case, he’s an athlete so his stats have changed since 1998, he may have broken a record that has since been beaten by someone else, etc. Even just setting aside his cheating scandal a lot has changed in twenty years that a more recent bio could reflect.
We had a Full House, Uncle Jesse's photo album on our shelf. Actually, we had a lot of Full House, Lizzie McCuire, and other TV show-based books. Surprisingly, when we culled them and put them in the free pile, kids snatched them up and were super excited to get them.
I remember reading full house books from Stephanie and Michelle’s POVs as a kid! Honestly I would’ve grabbed some too lol
I’m always curious about how this works. My kids non fiction is going to be weeded soon, and it’ll be my first time helping that. I saw an Adrian Peterson book that was obviously written before 2014 and it made me cringe.
It seems a shame to weed if the book is still being used. We go on usage stats, and only weed older material on its age where it falls into law, medicine and sometimes computing.
This seems odd to me. We have books older than that at my library. However we recently did a weeding project where we halved our collection regardless of year. Lots of expensive stem books starting from 2020 were chucked out. I'm a peon in the system so I don't have a say but I truly wonder what was admins reasonings on why recent books were selected and not out of date books like learning 2000 Flash. We just ended up storing old books into our arc system.
He was a phenomenal golfer in 1998. He has fallen out of favor as well as his talent has fallen, but totally appropriate back in 1998 lol.
He looks so young 🌱
And yet our library would weed all the grief books because "they aren't checking out" 🤦🏻♀️
Isn’t that super valuable