Weeding a library is like weeding a garden, one looks over everything and carefully selects those things which need to be removed. Weeding can be either scheduled regularly or irregularly, as the need arises, or can be constantly ongoing. Here at the Kelly Library, we need to weed the collection for many reasons, the most pressing of which is that we are simply out of shelf space for new books. Another reason is that, as the curriculum of Emory and Henry evolves, the collection needs to evolve along with it, in order to adequately support it. A couple of examples include criminology and social work, which were once part of our curriculum but no longer are.
Books also wear out and fall apart.
At other times, certain materials were added to the collection that no longer fit our collection development policy. For example, at this time, we try not to collect textbooks, yet there are many old textbooks on our shelves. Other examples are the multitudes of duplicate copies of many books, where a single or a couple of copies is now sufficient for our needs. For these reasons, there are always books and other materials that need to be removed from our collection. The librarians and the archivist are all information professionals, trained and experienced in the science of collection maintenance.