Collection Maintenance Tips

The children’s library experiences some very high traffic areas.

Watch those high traffic areas (drawing, dinosaurs, animals, jokes, series…) carefully.

Wear and tear on materials comes with the territory. There are some strategies for dealing with popular titles that you know will wear fast:

• Order extra paperback copies to spread the use around. Paperbacks are inexpensive and easy to replace.
• Order some well-used picture books in Permabound, Turtleback, or Penworthy-style binding. These companies offer materials specially sewn and sturdily covered to stand up to excessive use. Some even offer replacement copies if they fail to hold up.
• Invest in lamination materials and add a layer of laminate to protect paperbacks and extend their library life.

Keeping order is a challenging but important part of children’s library work.
Due to the nature of collection use – children pulling books off the shelves and putting them back haphazardly – the children’s collection is one that must be regularly shelf read. Shelf reading is going through the stacks systematically, making sure all the fiction is in alphabetical order by author (and within author, by title) and all the nonfiction is in Dewey order. Shelf reading is extremely important to effective service and circulation statistics. If a child can’t find it, that child can’t use it or check it out.

This is an area that takes time and skill so you might train an adult volunteer or older student to assist you in the process.

Develop a system for updating those nonfiction areas (i.e. sciences, popular biographies, world geography) that experience some degree of constant change as well as keeping up on regular replacement ordering. Attempt to go through your entire nonfiction section at least every five years.

Your library’s mission and your collection development policy guide all collection development practices and that includes weeding.  Following is a short review of the main principles of weeding:

Weeding is generally conducted to serve the following functions:

• To maintain or gain physical space
• To keep the collection in good repair
• To ensure accuracy of information

Weeding candidates include:

• Duplicate copies (other than current popular fiction)
• Damaged or dirty materials (may need to reorder)
• Outdated once-popular subjects
• Inaccurate information

If you have already taken the ABLE Weeding course you’ll recall the acronym MUSTIE:

M= Misleading-factually inaccurate
U= Ugly-worn beyond mending or rebinding
S= Superceded by a new edition or by a much better book on subject
T= Trivial-of no discernible literary or scientific merit
I= Irrelevant to the needs and interests of the library's community
E= Elsewhere-the material is easily obtainable from another library

These principles apply to all children’s materials.

It is important to remember that due to the high use of certain materials in the children’s area, replacing those weeded items for the above reasons is very important. For example, if you remove a book on robots because it was written in 1984, make sure you currently have, or put on order, a more up-to-date book on the subject for those interested. It is suggested you not discard without having a system in place to ensure you can provide other materials on the subject, even if it is a section in an existing reference book. Then create a folder for items to be added onto some future order as funding permits. Have a systematic process for reordering; do not rely on memory or vague notes.

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