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  • Thursday, September 18, 2014

    Coping with the Weeding Moratorium & Floating Tips

    From the Collection Development Team:

    As we hope you all have heard by now, there is currently a moratorium in effect on routine collection weeding, although preapproved worn and damaged items may still be withdrawn and boxed as regular Discards as usual.

    During the moratorium, the Collection Development team encourages Neighborhood Libraries staff to cope with the resulting shelving issues by:

    o   Shifting collections in-house as much as practical to ease crowded areas
    o   Being willing to accept more than the usual numbers of items floated to your location from locations with space issues and from the Floating Hubs
    o   Proactively establishing biweekly or monthly swaps of various types of materials (e.g. a box of audiobooks in exchange for a box of cookbooks or trading large print titles) with cooperative trading partners.  Such partnerships are increasingly important.
    o   Regularly checking the Float Blog (http://hplfloat.blogspot.com/) to post items available, make requests, and shop for things your customers like
    o   Aggressively marketing your collection with displays, hand-selling (readers’ advisory), working with neighborhood schools and daycares, etc.  If books are circulating, they are not taking up space on your shelves!

    We would remind locations that no location can “opt out” of receiving floated materials, although the following locations are so space-challenged that they should only receive those floats that are targeted to their perennial needs or sent from the Float Hubs (see the Float Blog  http://hplfloat.blogspot.com/ to look at the Perennial Needs spreadsheet or to amend your own):  DIX, DIS, FRA, LAK, MCH, PLE, SWC, TUT, YOU.  

    As you know, these locations do not float at all:  CEN, CMH, HMRC, CLA, and GRE. 

    In addition, we encourage staff trained in Collection HQ to use the “rebalance” tools cooperatively with other locations.  We will be offering more training in Collection HQ later this fall.  Anyone who is already trained who would like help with these tools is welcome to contact Sally Bates or Patrick Atkins for help.

    As always, any Collection Development librarian is glad to train those who wish to learn ways to identify good homes for overflow you want to float out, visit libraries to brainstorm with you about shifting collections, and otherwise evaluate collections. 

    Once the moratorium is lifted we will be able to resume routine collection maintenance activities, including the creation of weeding reports and approval of withdrawal of outdated materials in good condition, and again assist you with special weeding projects.

    MR

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