Life in the Stacks : the Librarian's column

Libraries are repositories of knowledge. Collections of wisdom and folly, rigorously tested facts and flights of fancy. In other words, libraries have lots and lots of… stuff. And Librarians, like professional packrats, gather and keep watch over the stuff. Not that we don’t have rigorous criteria for selecting the” best” stuff. We do. And we do maintain the stuff . . . er, collection, in a neat, tightly organized fashion; organization is one of our specialties. But once we acquire the stuff, we have to resist the urge – and sometimes our patrons’ urging - to save it forever.

Librarians have dubbed the cleaning-out process de-selection and weeding. There are complicated definitions that distinguish between these two terms, which, despite my best efforts, I never fully understood. Frankly, they both involve discarding old, under-used items, tattered items, outdated pieces, and extra copies to make room for new items that might fare better with the patrons.

My predecessor could not bear to break up a fifty-year collection of National Geographic magazines. I have no such qualms. We simply need the space.
A student saw me sorting a pile of journals.

“You can’t throw that away. It’s knowledge. And knowledge is valuable.” He told me that his own collection of National Geographic is ten years old; he has saved every issue since his grandfather gave him a subscription for his 7th birthday. The kid’s a collector. I pity his mother. And his future wife.

I assured the student that I wasn’t throwing out EVERYTHING and that the journals would be replaced with a CD-ROM. He seemed satisfied. I wish I were.
I said I had no qualms about this much-needed weeding. I lied. It makes me sad. Beautiful covers, interesting topics, a collection of brilliant authors: these journals contain knowledge and are much too valuable to be casually pitched into the recycling bin. Standard practice for school libraries is to keep the most-recent five years of a journal, but I played fast and loose with those guidelines; this was no casual cleaning exercise. Each issue was carefully considered. Unfortunately, issue after issue piqued my interest; I put aside a stash for my own reading. Articles about Monarchs and hummingbirds were set aside for my mother, the Dead Sea scrolls for my husband.

“Be picky,” said my inner librarian voice. And so I was – or tried to be. Issues recording landmarks in history, such as the first moon landing, were kept. As were articles by noteworthy authors-- Dr. Jane Goodall, former President Nixon. And, of course, I saved the issues considered collectors’ items. Other issues were given to various faculty members and students: Da Vinci and folk art to the art teacher; Old Iron Sides to the history teacher; James Madison to the student who loves American history and politics.

And on and on it went. Dusty pile after dusty pile. Several boxes of National Geographic have headed off for recycling; several more await their turn. The storage room looks cleaner, less crowded.

And then a student came to the library to search for pictures documenting Hurricane Katrina.
“When did Katrina hit?”
“I am not sure.”
“Run a quick Google search to find the date.”
“August, 2005.”
“Good job. Now let’s look through Time and Newsweek issues from August and September, 2005.”

Bingo! He headed off to art class a happy student. And I stopped to do the math. Following the generally accepted practice of saving the most recent five years of journals, those 2005 issues should have been tossed. Hm….

There’s a lesson there. There are good reasons for rules and guidelines. And I have formulated a new rule for myself. I will not toss out an entire year’s run of a journal without careful consideration. Articles documenting landmark moments in history are available online, but sometimes a patron needs to hold the journal in his hands, look at the photographs, and read and remember. Packrat tendencies, very carefully indulged, might be a good thing. After all, someone might need that journal someday.