Weed ‘Em and
Reap
Adrienne Radzvickas
Lincoln College
• Founded in 1865 as Lincoln
University
• Hybrid two- and four year
degree institution
• Two campuses
approximately 30 miles
apart
• Has a new college president
• Approximately 1000 FTE
and increasing
• Plan is to increase the
number of four-year degrees
Lincoln College
McKinstry Library
Agriculture
Anthropology
Art & Architecture
Biological Sciences
Business & Economics
Chemistry
Computer Science
Education
Engineering & Technology
Geography & Earth Sciences
History & Auxiliary Sciences
Language, Linguistics &…
Law
Library Science, Generalities…
Mathematics
Medicine
Music
Performing Arts
Philosophy & Religion
Physical Education &…
Physical Sciences
Political Science
Psychology
Sociology
Age of Collection by Conspectus Category
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1800-1899
1900-1919
1920s
1930s
2010-present
1990s
1960s
1930s
1800-1899
Lincoln College Age of
Collection
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000-2004
2005-2009
2010-present
Other
• Weed duplicates of items.
• If the material was published in the year 2000 or later,
keep the item. (We’ve occasionally kept items from the
1990s if the material still seems relevant.)
• If the material has ever circulated, keep it, unless the
material is so dated to be useless.
• Browses had not been used up to that point.
• Weed items in poor condition.
Weeding Criteria
• Weed textbooks in the collection.
• If the material is on the same subject as other items, keep
the newer material and weed the older material.
• Weed any materials that do not support our mission of
being an academic library. (Collection developers in the
past collected many materials as if we were a public
library.)
• If fewer than five copies were listed in OCLC, keep the
item.
• Offer books to the Last Copy in Illinois Project.
Weeding Criteria
Unweeded vs. Weeded
Keeping the patrons in mind
Image licensed under Creative
Commons by
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Biggest challenge
• Set up a review area
similar to Illinois
College’s
• Most faculty refused
to review
• Other faculty tried to
rescue books
Picture credit Wikivisual
Faculty Review
• Created a spreadsheet of withdrawn books
• Batch withdrew books (“Pick and Scan”)
• CARLI provides a list of withdrawn books with OCLC numbers, so used that
to batch withdraw OCLC holdings
• Part-time workers marked out library markings
Withdrawing books
• Sent to Better World
Books
• First, only the books
that BWB wanted
• Later, sent all books
that were within
BWB’s criteria
Disposal of Discards
• Too early for circulation data
• Have withdrawn around 4500 books thus far
• In Biographies, the average publication date of the books
changed from 1967 to 1975. It’s an improvement, but we
have a ways to go.
Statistics
• Even using the same circulation statistics, weeding
projects will differ because the institutions differ.
• Weeding should be looked at an ongoing process rather
than a one-shot deal.
Conclusion