Weeding

Careful weeding is an essential part of collection development. Two acronyms that librarians commonly use to guide this process are “MUSTY” and “CREW.”

MUSTY helps determine which materials need to be weeded and CREW encourages continuous weeding. Information about these methods is readily available through a quick web search and is also explained in the Crying Over Spilled Milk article referred to below.

For more intensive weeding, the book Resource Alignment: Providing Curriculum Support in the School Library Media Center by Karen Lowe is a helpful resource. This can be ordered through her website:

Generating Weeding Reports

  • Create a weeding list using Alexandria as a report in the copy category (steps shown below).

  • Upon request, many library book vendors will do a quick collection analysis from a library’s MARC records.

Recommended Weeding Sources

Recommended Procedure for Weeding Using Alexandria

  1. It is recommended that one specific section be weeded at a time. Choose the section that is most in need of updating.

  2. Print a weeding list from Alexandria’s report function, setting the parameters for the chosen section. This list will give you the call #, title, publication date, barcode #, lifetime usage (LTD), and date it was last used.

      1. Reports

      2. Copies

      3. Weeding List

      4. Sort By – whatever you want it sorted by

      5. Select By – whichever section you will be working with (Ex: 200-299).

  1. Look over the list for those items that may need weeding. You can check the publication year as a place to start, but usage may be taken into consideration, as well as condition of the book. You should always physically examine each book to look for the criteria outlined above. It is important to realize that many times the decision will be based on your opinion of usefulness, validity, etc. You have been trained to carefully make these decisions, so trust yourself!

  2. When you have determined that an item needs to be weeded, check the item out to “Discarded Copies” (Alexandria system patron 2). As you scan the item’s barcode, Alexandria offers a field for the reason. You may choose a specific reason or leave it on “weeded.”

  1. Print a report of items (item list report) currently checked out to Discarded Copies using the “copy status” for the selection. You may sort in different ways; use whichever way is convenient for you.

  2. Reports

  3. Copies

  4. Copy List – 1 Line

    1. You may choose simple 1-line list or you may choose detailed reports if you wish to have the reason noted on each discarded item.

  5. Select By: Copy Status

    1. Discarded Through Discarded

Once you have printed the report, use the Remove Discarded Copies utility to remove them from your system. It is strongly suggested that you always do an archive before removing records from your database.

  1. Utilities

  2. Copies

  3. Remove Discarded Copies

  4. Run

  5. Answer Yes if you want to continue

  6. Answer Yes to archiving

1. If you prefer, you can just go to the item’s record copy and remove the copy, but if you do that, you will not have a record of the item you discarded. Some people don’t care, while others prefer to have a record of what happened to items.

2. If you still have questions, feel free to ask a more experienced librarian for advice or if you are having trouble accessing any of the report, contact Alexandria Tech Support.


Disposing of Discarded Books

  1. Barcode labels should be removed and all school identification should be marked out.

  2. “Removed From Circulation” or “Discarded” should be written or stamped in each book.

  3. You may repurpose any of the items in accordance with the CMCSS Library Deselection policy.

  4. Books that are not repurposed should be boxed and sent to the CMCSS Warehouse as surplus. To do this, a material transfer form (CMCSS Form INV-P003) should be sent or faxed and a representative from the Warehouse will come to the school to get them. There is no need for an itemized list of all titles in each box. The number of boxes with an approximate amount of how many books total is sufficient.


CMCSS Library Deselection Policy

Repurposing includes but may not be limited to: donating books to students for personal use, donating to faculty/staff for classroom or student use, using the books to make/create projects/art,