One of the final things the out-going media specialist did to welcome me to the new job at the end of last year was take me on a “paper-work” tour. Our media program takes care of all purchase orders and the paper work can be daunting. She showed me a notebook of rules, policies and procedures that I would need. I consulted this to learn about our system’s policy on the disposal of weeded items.
I followed all of the directions of our “out processing” of items. I removed all school/library identification marks from all materials and clearly wrote DISCARDED in all capital letters on both end pages as instructed in the local policy. I then removed the items from Destiny and tracked them as weeded.
Our policy states that we should offer the books to local organizations if possible. We have a prison reading program that we offer the books to first. I called and asked if the prison would be interested in the discarded books. The prison was thrilled to get them. They plan to keep some titles for circulation and use those that are “past their prime” in art projects.
Collection Evaluation & Weeding 