Updated 4/13/2023
Reasons to weed:
Improve collection relevance to patrons
Make room for collection growth/development
Remove outdated or unused materials
Weeding guidelines:
Misleading (contains factually inaccurate information not of interest to History students, e.g., multiple works of phrenology)
Ugly (damaged or worn beyond repair)
Superseded (a newer edition or superior work on the subject is either available or already in the collection)
Trivial (of no literary or scientific merit to the collection)
Irrelevant (of no need or interest to the library’s patron base)
Elsewhere (material easily available from another library, and not of sufficient interest to justify inclusion in the Nielsen Library inventory)
Specific criteria:
Items that have not circulated (either in-house or checked out to a patron/ILL) in ten years for humanities works, five years for scientific/technical/medical works. However, this alone does not constitute sufficient grounds to weed.
Revised, more recent, or duplicate copies of work(s) with little usage
Material in outdated formats available in modern format (e.g., VHS copies available in DVD)
