[Publib] RE: CREW method : away away away gone

[Miriam Bobkoff]

Weeding story:

I have been helping out a little bit at the next tribal library down 
the road to the west. It is both their school library and their 
community library, contains mostly donations and perhaps the remains 
of former grants. There is no acquisitions budget. (Well, no staff 
budget either.)

I spent some time weeding out colonies of ugly old nonfiction, but 
there's almost nothing there from 000 to 999 which is not too old by 
CREW criteria. (The classrooms have their own shelves of books, I 
have no idea of their currency.)

I was just a stray volunteer, not empowered to be truly draconian; 
which  would anyway have given a peculiar message ('your library is 
trash') and left the shelves empty. And I could not get anyone to see 
that what we did weed needed to be thrown away away away gone. 
Parsimony ruled, and the weeds went to a giveaway area someplace else 
in the school, and subsequently home with the kids. (Ouch.)

Luckily the library where I usually hang out is in much better shape, 
thanks to an IMLS enhancement grant a couple of years ago. But our 
weeds also end up on the giveaway shelves unless I sneak them out and 
goodwill them, or put them in the recycling or whatever at home. Even 
people who no longer themselves read at all purely HATE to see books 
thrown away.

Miriam Bobkoff
usually at the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Library
Port Angeles, WA