Weeding Dewey Books: a 6-Step Plan for School Librarians

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Barbara Paciotti

There’s no one way to weed—much depends on your grade level and curriculum, your students, and which part of the collection is to be weeded. Weeding Dewey books generates the most questions on my listservs, so I’ll share my experience hoping that it makes your task easier and reassures you that what remains is useful and enjoyable for your students.

Your first inclination may be to run a report for never circulated books, but don’t. I did that my first time, but as I pulled books off the shelf, I realized they aren’t old, they’re invisible to students because they’re crammed in with truly old or unappealing books that circulated in the past, so they don’t appear on the report! After thinking about the problem, I came up with a new 6-Step Dewey Weeding Plan.

STEP 1: REMOVE OUTDATED/OLD BOOKS

First remove everything with a publication date older than the past 4-6 years, except for sections which never get “old” like 200 religion, 398 folktales, 800s literature, and those always-popular topics. This alone can remove up to 30% of your Dewey books, with the biggest weeds coming from the 300s, 500s, 600s, and 900s which all get old pretty fast. It’s amazing how much better the shelves look and how much easier it is to spot “interesting” books after doing this initial weeding.

At left is a helpful list I found for weeding Dewey numbers, made into a chart that also has columns for when each Dewey Class is weeded, when to weed it next, and when it’s inventoried.

After initial weeding, it’s tempting to keep some “old” books, thinking kids might still use them, but check the circulation stats: if the book wasn’t checked out at least 10 times in the past couple years, it doesn’t interest students; if it was, it’s a popular topic and you need to purchase more current books.

STEP 2: DETERMINE POPULAR TOPICS

Wondering how to determine popular topics? Circulation statistics can help, but it’s even better to use our own students! Invite a dozen or so kids from different grade levels, including some that aren’t usually library users, to a breakfast or lunch meeting. (If you’re new to the school, ask teachers to help choose students. It’s good PR to show that you invite input!)

Tell students you need their help to determine Dewey books they like to read and give them plenty of time to browse the now-thinned shelves to pick out a dozen books that interest them. By the end of the meeting you’ll end up with ~150 books on popular topics for incidental reading. These are the Dewey numbers you can weed less rigorously and you may even decide to put back a few of those older books you already weeded.

STEP 3: REMOVE NON-CURRICULAR BOOKS

Get rid of books that do not match Subject Content Standards, especially for research projects. Even if you think they’re “great titles” they won’t be used if they don’t fit your school’s curriculum. Don’t hang on to books “we used to use for research.” Curriculum changes may bring the topic back, but probably not sooner than 5-7 years, and by that time those books will be outdated.

For example, I removed all books about U.S. States except our own because middle school only studies our own (if needed, more current information is available online). I did keep books about cultural/ethnic/racial groups, books about events in U.S. History, and books about national parks or wonders, but I redid their Dewey numbers and kids began to check them out:

Geography, Natural Wonders, and Landmarks books are 973.091, where .091 is from DDC Table 1 Geographic Treatment.
Events, like western settlement and 9/11, were put into the time period in which they happened, from 973.1 through 973.9.

STEP 4: REMOVE BOOKS WITH ONLINE SOURCES

We typically choose online databases for curriculum-related topics that need to be current. For those topics it’s better for students to use the online resources, so weed these books ruthlessly!

Take a good look at your 900s. Country books get old fast, so if you have database subscriptions of countries, you don’t need country data & stats books. Keep topical books, such as national parks and natural wonders, cultural titles that highlight particular cities or peoples, and significant national events, especially if these books have lots of colorful pictures. Get rid of everything else—pare it down to a single section for each continent with only 2-3 shelves each. I guarantee your students will check out these “interesting” books like crazy once the “clutter” is gone.

A kid-friendly suggestion: I moved 980-990 books over to shelves next to 971 Canada & 972 Middle America books so all non-U.S. countries are along a single aisle of shelves. The sign at the end of the aisle has “Countries of the World”—the sign for the other side is “U.S. History”—and a small sign on the 972 shelf states the 973s are in the next aisle. Frankly, most kids don’t even realize there’s a gap—they just love browsing all the “other country” books in a single area! (If you are not a U.S. school library, I suspect the section of your own country books is huge compared to other-country books and a similar strategy will work for your students, too.)

STEP 5: REMOVE NEVER CIRCULATED BOOKS

Finally, weed unpopular and non-curricular titles that were never checked out, knowing no one will miss these books. If in doubt, my criteria for deciding was, if I wouldn’t read it, neither will a kid! The exception is books that students may enjoy if they’re shelved in another location with topically-related books.

STEP 6: CHANGE DEWEY NUMBERS FOR ACCESS

As I was weeding ‘never circulated’ items I came across many books that would be more noticed at a different location, so I changed the Dewey Call Numbers. I don’t see this as a problem, but rather as a solution. The whole purpose of DDC is “works that are used together to be found together” and our library ‘users’ are quite different from LOC or public library users. Here are examples of the larger changes I made so students could find books more easily.

BOY BOOKS:
- Pirate and shipwreck books are popular with middle school boys, so I pulled all the pirate books from other areas and added them to 910.4. I also added books on explorers and exploration & discovery to 910.9, so the “Adventure” shelf became very popular—I got several comments about all the “new” pirate books!
- Military books in 355-359 are boy favorites, but books on military vehicles were invisible among car books in the 620s. I changed their Dewey numbers to 355.8 and they were quickly checked out.
- Books on various types of buildings are in 300s, 600s, 700s (architecture), and even 900s (pyramids). I brought them all together into 690 Buildings—the last shelf of the 600s. Mine was at the end of an aisle, and that shelf became perpetually empty because books that had never before circulated were constantly being noticed and checked out…so I purchased lots of new ones!
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COMPUTER books are scattered from 003 through the 700s, making it nearly impossible to “browse” the topic. I pulled everything together to 621.38 and 621.39 and immediately had increased checkouts.
In the 973 U.S. HISTORY section I also changed books about the 13 original colonies to 973.2 with their 2-letter postal code instead of author letters. You can read more about this in my post How to Support Content Reading in Social Studies.

A SATISFIED COMPLETION

My library director always said, “It’s better to have a small collection of books that are read, than a huge collection of those that aren’t.” My first intensive weeding confirmed that: getting rid of uninteresting books helps kids find really interesting ones they want to read; getting multiple copies of popular topics means more students read more books; and having a substantially decreased collection actually increases circulation!

Now I rarely do a whole-collection inventory; each year I weed certain Dewey Classes, so I complete enough to do the entire collection within 5 years. I simply weed as I shelve books. Using my weeding chart and a diagram of my bookshelves, I print the scheduled shelves and tape the diagram to a bookcart. As I put books on a scheduled shelf, I take a few extra minutes to weed the shelf, then cross it off the diagram. When all shelves on the diagram are done, I record it in my digital documents, then print the next scheduled section.

A School Library Orientation Focuses on Location, Location, Location!

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Barbara Paciotti

A School Library Orientation establishes our year-long relationship with students (and teachers), so we need to offer an engaging lesson. The orientations I typically see online are presentations of 2-3 dozen slides, covering all aspects of library organization and rules. That is NOT a valuable lesson! It just puts kids to sleep with details they don’t need and won’t remember, and it wastes everyone’s valuable time.

Instead, we need to minimize information and give students a purposeful hands-on experience focused on the location of materials and how to find them.

ORIENTING STUDENTS TO LOCATION OF MATERIALS

The main purpose of a Library Orientation is to introduce locations so students can find a particular resource. This is very different than explaining what students will find inside those resources, which is another lesson altogether! What exactly are library “Locations”?

I name areas of our School Library according to what’s on the spine labels of the materials:

the “Dewey area” has Dewey-numbers on the spine labels
the “Fiction area” has FIC on the spine labels
the “Biography area” has B on the spine labels
the “Reference area” has REF on the labels
the “Magazine area” has MAG labels
the “Audio area” has AR labels
the “Video-DVD area” has VR labels
(the Computer area explains itself)

I tell students to think about a grocery store: there are areas for Produce and Frozen Foods and Meat and Dairy; you know you can locate those types of food in those locations. Likewise, in our School Library you can locate a Dewey book in the Dewey area, or a Fiction book in the Fiction area, or a Magazine in the Magazine area, a DVD in the Video area, CDs & Playaways in the Audio area, or you can search the Online Catalog in the Computer area. It’s very clear to students that you are referring to a location in the library at which to find those types of materials.

This terminology also helps students associate search results in the Online Catalog with the location of the material in the library, without having to explain what “call number” means. I just call it a “locator.” I’m also able to create special collection groups such as Careers, Multicultural America, or Fiction Subjects without confusing students—when it shows up in a search, they know it’s just another location in the library for specific materials.

Students learn that, regardless of what’s inside the resource, ‘locators‘ in the online catalog and on the spine labels of materials are simply a location mechanism. Even if they visit a library that doesn’t follow our classification scheme, they can still quickly and easily find something by using the ‘locator’ to find the area with the matching spine labels.

LIMITING LIBRARY ORIENTATION TO LOCATIONS

Our English/Language Arts teachers begin the year studying narrative literature, so it makes sense to invite their classes to visit the library during the first 2 weeks of school to check out Fiction books. Since that establishes the purpose of the visit, my Library Orientations focus on reading and the Fiction area of the library. I give students a method to choose a good book and then allow them plenty of time to do so. Eliminating everything else from orientation gives students a purposeful visit, and ELA teachers have become avid supporters, returning with their classes every other week for book checkout and DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) Time!

My Fiction area is organized by Subject—mystery, fantasy, scary, adventure, science fiction, romance, realistic fiction, and historical fiction. I don’t use the word genre because ELA Standards refer to genre as types of literature—narrative, expository, poetry, and drama.

Using the term Subject to identify different kinds of stories aligns with MARC records, with Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data on the copyright page inside a book, and with our Online Catalog when students search by Subject for the kind of story they want to read. Because students already associate Subjects with school, they readily understand what I mean by “Fiction organized by Subject” and that each Subject has its own special location.

Since I carefully avoid using the term genre for books in the Fiction area, ELA teachers appreciate that I don’t confuse what they are teaching students!

I customize a Library Orientation for each grade level so the lesson I have for lowest-grade-level students who are new to our school and library is different from lessons for returning students who just need something to rekindle their interest. I have an activity that introduces reading choices aligned with grade-level curriculum, so each grade level has a unique experience and I can use the same Library Orientation Lessons every year:

‘Newbie’ 6^th graders learn the locations of Subjects in the Fiction area and how to choose a good book. During DEAR time, they learn my standardized procedure to check out their book. (Newbies get a second orientation two weeks later to learn about library policies & expectations.)
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7^th graders have a Scavenger Hunt to review various locations throughout the library and I introduce them to some new reading formats they may not have used the prior year.
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8^th graders have a Fiction Subject ‘tech integration’ lesson using smartphones to view video book trailers with a review of Subject locations in the Fiction area.

A DEWEY LOCATION ORIENTATION WITH MATH CLASSES

By limiting the initial orientation to the Fiction location, I can have 6g and 7g Math classes visit the library for Dewey Decimal Lessons that focus on Locations in the Dewey area of the library and to also give students a fun review of what they should know as they begin their Math decimal unit. Math teachers appreciate that we activate prior knowledge to prepare students for new content, and they can readily see who may need extra help to catch up. This lesson is early enough in the school year that students can then begin checking out Dewey books to go along with their ELA fiction choices.

When we focus on location, not content, students are not confused about the Dewey area. I never refer to the Dewey area as ‘non-fiction’ or ‘informational’ books—those are terms for what’s inside the container—so I never have to explain why fictional poetry or folklore are in the Dewey area.

DOING CONTENT LESSON VISITS FOR WHAT’S ‘INSIDE’

After library orientation for Fiction and doing Dewey with Math, I’m able to invite other subject area classes to visit the school library for lessons that focus on the content inside the library materials. Especially when students visit the library to find information for assignments, I can customize lessons exclusively for the purpose of the visit.

I use that grocery store example to relate location to content organization:

The containers on a grocery store shelf vary according to what’s inside, so the Dairy area of a grocery store has different sections for eggs or milk or cheese or butter or yogurt. Likewise, in the Dewey area we have different sections of books organized according to the information inside: poetry, folklore, cars, countries, or animals…even imaginary beings like unicorns. This also applies to the digital collection of the library, where our Virtual School Library website organizes e-books and online subscription services according to the information inside.

This content inside analogy also helps students learn to create search terms for the library catalog or online subscription services.

LOCATION ORIENTATIONS KEEP IT SIMPLE

By first introducing students to library locations as related to the ‘locators’ on spine labels and in the online catalog, students quickly understand how to find library materials regardless of the content they are looking for. This approach reduces confusion and allows later library lessons to gradually build their knowledge of the library. It also stimulates a wider use of the library collection as a valuable resource to enhance classroom activities and encourages more teachers to collaborate.


Visit No Sweat Library on TPT to find my individual & bundled middle school orientations!	Visit No Sweat Library on TPT to find my individual & bundled middle school Dewey lessons!

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