Weeding

The Problem:

Looking at old records, the last time the books were weeded was 7 years ago.  Looking at the books in the non-fiction it is safe to assume that 7 years ago the only books that were weeded were probably broken or had inaccurate information.  The average age of the non-fiction collection is 1990, sadly 13 years old.  Fiction chapter books had the average copyright date of 1978 and Easy Fiction books 1982. 

These books are what was weeded from the 000s, 100s,  200s, and beginning of the 300s. Some of our smallest section in the library

 

 The Need:

Common Core requires students to read more information text.  The selection of non-fiction books is vast but of little quality.  Staff and students need a smaller better quality selection of non-fiction books.

The Solution:

First I analyzed the collection and choose the maximum age of books I wanted in each collection area.  This is a personal preference and as I weeded I learned it does not work for every book.

Section	Maximum Age (yrs)
000s	8
100s	15
200s	15
300s	15
400s	15
500s	10
600s	10
700s	12
800s	15
900s	12
Easy Fiction	20
Fiction	20
Professional	8

Once I learned the number of books I needed to pull knew my funding could not rebuild my collection so I wrote a grant for $5,000 to purchase books. ::Fingers Crossed::

  After pulling all the books the fun comes, BUYING! I cannot wait.

The Books:

Once I pull all the books, I will have boxes, and boxes, and boxes of books.  The last thing I want is for them is to take up space in my library.  Classroom teachers will have first grabs but then what...

Recently I have been sending my books to Better World Books. They currently do not pay school libraries for the books but they do pay all shipping costs.
Other options are Blogistics . This company will sort your books, sell them, and split the profits with you. 
Got Library Books also offers no out of pocket expenses but a return.  The big bonus is that you do not have to pre-scan your books.
ALA created a Delicious list for like resources: https://delicious.com/alalibrary/bookdonations