Weeding Your Collection

Selecting materials is only half of the collection development process—weeding, or deselecting materials, also takes constant staff attention. A truly patron-driven collection serves its community effectively, and with continually increasing demands taxing libraries’ limited resources, every item in a physical collection must justify its shelf space.

In this workshop, weeding expert Karen Toonen will cover the challenges inherent to weeding and share tips, tricks, and tools for collection evaluation.

After participating in this event, you will:

• Be able to articulate to internal and external stakeholders why weeding is as important as selection as part of a robust collection development plan
• Be able to revitalize collections, increase circulation, enhance visibility of diverse materials, and highlight materials relevant to your communities with confidence
• Be able to implement logical, rigorous weeding doctrines which will free areas for new collections, promote patron driven collection policies, and create additional space.

Karen Toonen is the Collection Services Manager at Naperville Public Library, the second highest circulating public library in Illinois. Throughout 7 years as a Readers Advisory Assistant and 12 years as an Adult Services Librarian, she has remained focused on collections. Karen has presented extensively on weeding and other collection development aspects at the regional, state, and national level. Her service on the Adult Reading Round Table's Steering Committee has not only allowed her to learn about weeding from colleagues across northern Illinois but also informed her philosophy that weeding and readers advisory go hand in hand.

This event will be hosted in Zoom. Automatic captions will be enabled for this event. This event will be recorded, and registrants will receive access to the recording within a day after the event ends.

CALL Training Partner for this Event: American Library Association