Weeding the Library Patch

We have just recently weeded and culled our 10 year old library and borrowing stats have greatly improved with the cleaner and brighter shelves attracting lots more students.

We held  a few books sales for staff and students and gave a lot to charity. Some went to Kanga Books, Rotary and others were donated to fetes etc….

Lawrence Foon (Sydney based) from the old boys association of Marist Brothers High School in Suva  picked up resources (books in good condition – Fiction and Non-Fiction), as well as, sets of textbooks – especially maths and science and English. Given that some schools might be purchasing new textbooks for next year this might be a good opportunity to find a home for books that are still in good condition. They are also looking for laptops and computers.
 
Here is a link to the old boys’ website:
 
www.ozmob.com.au ( http://www.ozmob.com.au/ )
 
If you can help out his phone number is 0410 804827.

HOPE worldwide (Australia) is another company that picks up book to deliver to Papua New Guinea I think.
ph: (612) 98681980
em: anabel@hopewwaustralia.org.au<mailto:anabel@hopewwaustralia.org.au>
web: www.hopewwaustralia.org.au<http://www.hopewwaustralia.org.au>          22 Howard Place, North Epping NSW 2121.
 

We did have a little chat with our Principals and executive staff about the cull before proceeding just to make sure we were all on the same page and they were very supportive after asking a few initial questions about why, where, how etc…

The following website was helpful in guiding us:
http://www.lib.az.us/cdt/weeding.aspx

The books were sorted in into piles labelled :  WITHDRAW, MEND, REPLACE, CHECK FURTHER, TRANSFER TO, OTHER  as is suggested. One acronym I thought was clever was M-U-S-T-I-E:

‘… MUSTIE, to indicate when an item should be removed from the collection. MUSTIE stands for:
* Misleading and/or factually inaccurate: (this includes items that fail to have the substantial periods of time not represented because of the age of the material)

* Ugly (worn out beyond reasonable mending or having been poorly repaired in the past)

* Superseded by a new edition or a better source (keep in mind the use of the Web as a better, more up-to-date source in many cases)

* Trivial (of no discernable literary or scientific merit & without sufficient use to justify keeping it)

* Irrelevant to the needs and interests of your community; (not used even though we may find it “interesting”!)

* Elsewhere (the material may be easily borrowed from another source or found on the Web)’

This could also be applied to the students at our College
Thanks to Helen Rowling from OZTLnet and also Helen Wynd for the ideas.