Gardening in the Library: Weeding at Hart House Library
By Katya Pereyaslavska (Library Curator) and Stephen Spong (Special Projects)
Hart House Library, nestled away in a quiet corner of the University of Toronto’s Hart House, is a unique and very special collection. Established in 1919 by the Massey family, the library has served a diverse community over the past ninety-two years, reflecting the changing faces of Hart House. Currently, the library, which would fit right in at Hogwarts, holds some 5,000 volumes on its intricately carved and stained-wood shelves; however, it is only now that a proper weeding project has been initiated with the help of twenty student volunteers.
The most difficult aspect of this project is to actually get started on it or, perhaps more accurately, deciding how it should be initiated and how to implement it most effectively. What is to be done with all the past donations comprising of outdated textbooks and poorly-maintained cheap editions of Huckleberry Finn? Should they be assessed or should we just create a “sale truck” where volumes in question can be sold off to raise funds for the library? Are they worth anything? Should they be donated instead? Where do we even start?! These questions and more make laying the groundwork a delicate operation.
While attempting to come to terms with this conundrum, we came upon Zotero, which offered the solution we were looking for. Available as a small, free download, Zotero – a plug-in for Firefox, rather than a stand-alone program – allows one to extract and edit library records from any catalogue record viewed in the browser – from WorldCat, public and academic libraries and even Library Thing where the Hart House Library recently uploaded its catalogue.
Having offered several training sessions and sent out links to online tutorials, the next step was dividing volunteers into teams responsible for specific sections of the library. From there, we have created subject-specific folders corresponding with the appropriate section of the library, and then each one has subfolders named “replace”, “deaccession” and “not found.” This allows for a simple, methodical approach.
The “replace” folder is intended to include classics and must-haves for our library that are currently in poor condition or outdated. Due to the increasingly high cost of book repairs and our modest budget, the library cannot afford to replace all books which are in poor condition. Our aim is to be able to buy newer and more attractive hardcover volumes to replace shabby and overused paperbacks, instead of spending a fortune on repairs. However, before any volumes from this folder are replaced, we shall run the list by a rare book specialist to advise us as to whether it might contain any valuable items in which case we might decide to splurge on repairs or donate these volumes to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.
The “deaccession” folder will contain books that are obviously in need of weeding because they are old textbooks or items that do not fit well into the overall character of the collection. The drafting of newly updated Collection Development and Mission Statement documents that were subsequently distributed to the volunteers provides a clear framework within which to work. More often than not assigning sections based on individual background and expertise allows for a more critical approach to weeding as well as encouraging students to actively participate in compiling lists of contributions for acquisitions.
The Hart House Library is currently in the process of working through the sections and waiting for the folders to be filled with lists of books. The wonderful thing about Zotero is that it actually allows for the exporting of content to spreadsheets as well as for the editing of imported records to change publishing information and add notes on anything (which is especially useful for condition reports). This will prove to be quite useful when studying this part of our collection and making joint decisions with administration. Although the library is small, this makes the project all the more manageable, as well as a fantastic training ground for our volunteer-based staff of library students.
Published in the Special Librarian Association's "The Courier"
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