Monday, August 17, 2015

Ken, there's nothing 'distasteful' about it; weeding is a key element of collection development


This post, by the way, is not intended to be a defense of Jeff Scott.

Photo credit:  LinkedIn

As reported in Critics Decry “Librarygate” as Berkeley Tosses Thousands of Books.  (AllGov California, 8/17/2015)

Jeff Scott's focus on "next generation library services" seems to be in conflict with his "participatory management style".   (As determined, by me, here.)

By refusing to allow library staff to remove outdated, worn, and long-ignored titles from the collection, elected local and county officials would have to approve major capital expenditures for their libraries on a regular basis.

So what do you think?  How did we get to this place where weeding books is an abomination?

Related post:
Sounds to me as though Jeff Scott's initial tally of 2,274 weeded books falls well outside the bounds of "an honest mistake".  (8/14/2015)

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