Books are Sacred

(Photo credit: Vaultboy on Flickr)

Somewhere along the way, books became sacred. I don't just mean Bibles and other truly sacred texts, either. There are some really interesting books about...well, books and the history of written language. I find that kind of thing fascinating!

I moved houses recently, and it made me look at the books I own. I'm not a big book-buyer or book-owner. The books I do own are mostly gifts, cook books, and a very few (maybe 10?) titles I bought at used book sales and the Borders close-out sale and haven't read yet.

As a child, a teen, and even a young adult, I loved books and couldn't stand the thought of parting with them. They would have been the first items to get moved to the new house.

Now that I'm older, maybe it's that the library business has made me look at books in a different way. They aren't as sacred to me because I'm surrounded by them all day every day. I'm more into the idea of "open source," and sharing where books are concerned. I am happy to take my turn with a books I want and then pass it back for the good of the community.

Owning a book that sits on a shelf just seems wasteful. I never read a book twice. Ever. I can't think of a book that I've read more than once. There are so many books in the world, and I take too long to get through each one that I choose, that re-reading a book seems like a waste of time. I envy people who do, though. I'm sure a second reading would give so much more meaning and depth to a book.

The moral of the story is that when I moved recently, books were among the first things sorted into "keep" or "weed" piles. The "weed" pile got donated back to the library. The "keep" pile will find their way into my new house. I weeded a lot, actually...but I know that if I ever want to read them, they're probably available at a library somewhere.

(As an aside, I don't own an eReader, but that would have pretty much solved my problem of which books to move, wouldn't it?)

Shelf Balancing Results

(Read my previous posts on shelf balancing here.)

Before...books on the very top shelves and very little extra space on any shelf

After...lots of extra space on every shelf, and no books on the very top shelves (which you can't see here. There's one more empty shelf above the top row of books in this picture.)

The goal of my shelf-balancing project (which just sounds fancier than "shifting," but shifting is basically what we did) was to balance the available space between the collections. It wasn't to equalize the space, but to create balance - a very important distinction. This project was focused solely on non-fiction, so the "collections" are the Dewey ranges from 000 to 900. I took into consideration the average size of the items in any given collection (art books are huge; poetry books are small), the average circulation of the items (some collections circulate more during the school year and less in the summer, and some just have a higher turnover rate), and how much space was actually available. We shifted the reference collection enough to add about half a row of shelves to the end of the non-fiction section. A lot of weeding has been done in the last year, and there were big pockets of space here and there throughout non-fiction. That space was needed in different areas, so we balanced it out.

I admit, I was nervous about the whole thing. Once you start shifting, it can snowball out of control. You can end up with an empty row at the end, when you thought you'd run out of space well before that. In that case, you have to start over and adjust your spacing as you go. That would have been really, really bad! The opposite could have also happened - you could run out of space much too soon and not get to shift the collections that need it most. It is a delicate endeavor that requires a lot of attention.

So, we started at the end of the 900s and shifted toward the 000s. At one point, there was a completely empty row. I had some confidence in my numbers, and that we'd fill it back up when we got a bit further in, but I was definitely nervous at times!

Here's a half-empty row with another half-empty row on the other side.

I honestly thought we'd run out of extra space around the 500s. That didn't happen. We made it all the way to the beginning with just enough space to give a little breathing room to the computer books in the 000s. I would have liked to have more space left to give the computer books, but they did get a nudge.

The formula I started with came from an article by Tony Greiner from the November/December 2005 issue of Public Libraries magazine called "Collection Development and Shelf Space: A Proposal for Nonfiction Collections." The man is a genius and I would LOVE to meet him someday! (Anybody know him?) It was actually a combination of formulas that assigns shelf space by percentage of circulation. Basically, he says that the percentage of the total available shelving assigned to any collection should be equal to that collection's percentage of the total circulation. If the 400s contribute to 2% of the total circulation, they should be assigned 2% of the total available shelving. You have to adjust for size, like in the 700s where the art books are oversized, but that's the general premise. When I ran the numbers, it looked like the 000s should get 73 more shelves and the 300s should give up 32 shelves. Some of the numbers, like these, seemed a little extreme. I guess I couldn't commit completely to Mr. Greiner's philosophy. I added an "adjusted for practicality" column to my spreadsheet and went with adding 15 shelves to the 000s and only giving up 6 shelves from the 300s.

In addition to not quite committing 100% to Mr. Greiner's philosophy, I was in a position not mentioned in his article: the shelf balancing part. I had those big pockets of space created by weeding that needed to be acknowledged. I didn't want to penalize collections that had been weeded by giving away all the space created by those diligent librarians. They needed to be left some room to grow and replace some of what was removed. I also didn't want to award the collections that were overfull from lack of weeding. They weren't going to get extra space to accommodate their out-of-date books. Again, I wanted to balance the space. Luckily, there really weren't any horribly neglected collections, so it wasn't too much of an issue - but I did take it into consideration.

The good news is that every collection now has a comfortable amount of space.

The bad news is that a lot of different people contributed to the shifting, and some people had a different idea of what was "enough" space to leave on each shelf. Had one person done all of the shifting, it would have been more consistent. That was impossible, so we ended up with some inconsistency. I would have liked certain collections to get a bit more space than they ended up getting.

Back to the good news: every collection has a comfortable amount of space. I went back and counted how many shelves each Dewey range ended up occupying after the shift. My "adjusted for practicality" numbers are reasonably close to the final numbers! For example, I planned to assign 75 total shelves to the 500s and they ended up with 71. The 700s were assigned 160 and ended up with 158. The one that was the furthest off was the 900s, which I had assigned 250 and ended up with 227. Even the 000s ended up on 45 shelves, while I had hoped for 60. After shifting every single item starting at 999, I feel pretty good about giving the 000s five extra shelves, even if I had hoped for 15 extra. Especially since I thought we'd run out of extra shelves by the 500s.

I wish I had more scientific or logical reasoning to share for the "adjusted for practicality" column on the spreadsheet. It was a combination of having done a shift like this before, closely following circulation patterns and weeding habits of the librarians, and a good guess. It was totally worth doing and I'm happy with the results!

The PLC

Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction
13th edition
2008

This reference book (and also database) is more commonly known as the Public Library Catalog, or the PLC. It lists titles that are considered "core" for the average public library nonfiction collection. I have opinions about it. Are you surprised?

This can be a handy tool for a number of reasons:
-Wondering if a title is cataloged correctly? There are a lot of ways to check that, including looking it up in the PLC. Subject headings and call numbers are provided for the titles it includes.

-Wondering if a title should be kept vs. weeded? Look it up in the PLC to see if it is considered a "core" title.

-Building a library from scratch? Look for titles considered "core" in each subject area to give you a starting point.

Here's what it is not intended for:
-Giving the final answer in that keep or weed scenario. Circulation data means more than a listing in the PLC. Is the item being used, or has it been a shelf-sitter for a while? Personally, I don't care what the PLC says. If a book has been sitting untouched for several years, the community has spoken: it's unwanted. Besides, I can probably ILL it from somewhere if I weed it.

-Defining a collection. Your library's mission and collection management policy define your collection. The PLC can't speak to the intricacies and specifics of your community. Let your users lead the way in collection scope, and write mission statements and collection policies that follow their lead.

Conclusion:
The PLC is a great starting point and a handy reference tool. It should be taken with a grain of salt and never supercede what the public demands. You never have to buy a title just because it is listed in the PLC, and you never have to keep a title just because it is listed in the PLC. It is one set of data among all the other collection data available to you.

It Ain't Easy

I love to weed. Love it. That's no surprise to anyone. Here's the thing, though: it's not about the weeding itself. It's about what you create when you weed. I really love a shiny, clean, up-to-date collection where you know that everything you pull off the shelf is relevant.

I also love the relationship you create with a collection when you weed it. Too psycho-babble-y? Ok, I'm not in there singing Kum ba yah and laying hands on the books. I just mean that when you separate the good from the bad, you become more aware of what you have.

I weeded the 500s yesterday. For those of you who don't know, that is the Dewey section for science and math. I'd already gone over it once and pulled the most obvious shelf-sitters. I started with a report from the library catalog that listed every title in the 500s section that hadn't been checked out in the last five years. There were a couple hundred. Yesterday was the second go-over of this collection. I really needed to make more space there, so I narrowed that list to titles that hadn't been checked out in the last three years. There were another couple of hundred. I've pulled maybe fifty from that list so far.

I'm a firm believer that you can not rely on circulation statistics alone. My first pass was mainly to pull shelf-sitters, but this time I wanted to pay more attention to what was on the shelf while I was in there: what looked dirty, torn, yellowed, and stupid.

Yes, I said stupid. I found a book called "The Abacus: A Pocket Computer." Seriously. It had gone out in the last two years, so it wasn't on the report. I can only imagine the person who checked it out, taking it home to show their friends, "Look what I found at the library! Har har har!" Oh, the shame. I'm sure that person didn't mention all the current books that were sitting right next to the abacus book! I can't fault any particular person for this oversight, though. Things get missed. It might have been checked out when this section was last weeded. Librarians-of-500s-past might have a different philosophy than I do about books of a historical nature. Lord knows this collection has changed hands a few times since 1968 when this book was published. However, whatever the reason it was still there in 2011, in my humble opinion, a book about how to use an abacus is...stupid. That was an easy weed.

I also found a lot of titles on the list that were really great books. I found The Geologic Story of Isle Royale National Park by Normal King Huber, c.1983. I found Northern Flights: Tracking the Birds and Birders of Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Sheryl De Vore, c.1999. I found The World of the Penguin by Jonathan Chester, c.1996. I found Rare and Elusive Birds of North America by William Burt, c.2001. All great books; all with information duplicated in other books or databases; all with no circulations in the last three to five years.

In my first pass with the five-year list, there were some books that I just couldn't part with. I had to wait and see what else was in the collection before I could commit to weeding them. Those titles, of course, showed up again on the three-year list. It was time to make some tough choices. I had to look for other places that might contain the same information. I had to see the bigger picture.

It was painful. I still have to go back and make up about four more shelves worth of space, too. The moral of the story is: as much as I love to weed, I also love books. I have as much trouble as everyone else letting go. There are some terrific books that will have to be passed to the Friends of the Library book sale because they just aren't working in this community. I can look forward to all of the books I will continue to select for this collection that will hopefully do better, but their day will come to be weeded too. Quality collections are not static. They grow, they are used, they are popular...and then they stop. Weeding has to be done, and putting the focus back on the needs of the community and the mission of this library helps, but it ain't always easy.

Library Day in the Life 7

Hey, everybody, it's #libday7! That means you get to read another stimulating day in the life of me at work. Rarely do people give me the line about "must be nice to read at work all day" (completely false), but they do sometimes assume I stamp due dates (we have receipt printers for that) and shelve books (we have Pages for that, and their job is CRUCIAL - but it's not what I do). Here's what I did today.

I came in with a plan:
1. Look at the week's service desk coverage to see where any subs maybe needed
2. Finalize the shelf balancing plan (aka shifting of non-fiction)
3. Write a book review for the staff choices blog
4. Plan service desk coverage during upcoming in-house Joomla training
5. Read resumes/cover letters sent in for internship positions

Here's what actually happened:
1. My mailbox was packed! There were four time off request forms (torfs...the devil's paperwork), a big envelope of brochures for a nearby university (passed to college search collection person), an internship resume/cover letter, and some junk mail.

2. Dealt with the torfs. It won't be pretty on those days, but we'll get the desks covered. I sent an email to the sub list to see who's available to cover on those days.

3. Moving on to email. Received a few more intern applications. I printed them and added to the pile of those to be read.

4. I took the camera up to the third floor to take some "before" pictures of the non-fiction section. I am planning a shelf balancing project to start next month. Some of the Dewey ranges within non-fiction are really tight on space. Other sections have been recently weeded, and so they have lots of open space available. I took pictures of the tight spots and the really open spots.

5. If you read those shelf balancing posts I already wrote, you will see how mathematical the whole thing is. I need to make sure that each section is allotted enough space, but not too much. I need to count the shelves that each range currently takes up and figure out how many shelves each collection needs - and stay within the total number of shelves available. It is difficult because some sections have six shelves per column and some have five. Some, like the 700s, are spaced wider because those art books are so huge. When we shift, the 700s won't be on those wider spots anymore, and the places where they land will have to be re-spaced. What a nightmare. I still don't have it quite right. I realized by the time I got to the 500s (my collection) that it wasn't going to fit.

6. So I weeded. First, I ran a new report - everything in the 500s that hasn't been checked out in three years or more, organized by publication date. With 13 pages of titles in hand, I grabbed a cart and headed back upstairs. As much as I love a clean collection, and the act of weeding, My collection is down to where it is starting to hurt to let go of some of the titles. They aren't bad books - they just aren't being used. I filled an entire cart with books to be passed on to the Friends of the Library's book sale.

7. I unloaded the cart onto the counter in my office so that the cart could be used elsewhere in the building. I had to be on-desk in fifteen minutes, so I updated #libday7 on my twitter feed, checked email quickly, and went back upstairs to the reference desk.

8. I am now on-desk. It's a slow night, reference-wise! I've been here for an hour and only had one question so far: "How do I get to the Detroit Free Press Index?" He really wanted to search the Detroit Free Press Historical database, and I got him in to it. I've got another hour at this desk, then an hour off, then back on at the reader's advisory desk. I'm planning to get that Staff Choices blog book review written while I'm on desk, and start reading those resumes too.

So, better get to it! If this week shapes up interesting, I'll write up another #libday7 post.