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and damaged items may still be withdrawn and boxed as regular Discards as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reports and approval of withdrawal of outdated materials in good condition, and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
