[Libs-Or] Weeding: CREW is unproven

[Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney]

Weeding by circulation is definitely a very effective tool, especially for fiction and popular materials. But as I pointed out in my previous commentary, if you only weed for circulation you also end up with superseded or inaccurate books on the shelf. It's important not to just weed for popularity, but also for accuracy.

So while CREW and similar methods for weeding for condition and relevance might be unproven as far as circulation goes, I think we can all agree that part of effectively curating a collection is ensuring that our materials are not just popular, but also accurate and not superseded.

Cheers,
Kirsten

________________________________
From: Libs-Or <libs-or-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us> on behalf of Tony <tony_greiner at hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 9, 2017 10:04 PM
To: libs-or at listsmart.osl.state.or.us
Subject: [Libs-Or] Weeding: CREW is unproven


I would be remiss if I didn't point out that while CREW "Feels good" and is popular, it has never been tested as an effective weeding tool.  To my knowledge, the only weeding system that has been tested for effectiveness is Stanley Slote's "Shelf-time" system. Slote relied on the established findings that the best predictor of if a book will be used in the future is how long it has been since its last checkout.  The longer the period since the last checkout, the more likely it is that the book will not be used again.


Slote's test of this led to his discovery that, weeding by shelf-time leads to increased circulation.  Unfortunately the 'shelf-time' part of that finding has dropped away, and now we are told "weeding increases circulation."


A good guide to this is the 4th edition of his book, "Weeding Library Collections".  The technology he describes is out of date, but his methodology is sound, and  any ILS can easily produce a list of how long since items have checked out.


Tony Greiner


Primo and Alma: Making WorldCat Local Look Good
**tony_greiner at hotmail.com**
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/libs-or/attachments/20170310/3dae24ce/attachment.html>