Weeding - Part three in the "Build a Library Series

[mmcnealy]

In the first two parts of this series, I wrote what should be in your library. Now I'm going to talk about what shouldn't be in your library.

There's this great concept I learned about in library school, and its called "Weeding".

Weeding is going through the collection and getting rid of books or resources that are no longer useful to you. Let's face it, sooner or later you WILL run out of bookshelf space, or places to put bookshelves. And really, are every last one of those books useful to you? Do you enjoy them? Are the books you love getting lost in the books you are just anti-pathetic about? Have you bought too many books that were mistakes?

In which case, its time to weed.

---

How to weed your personal library

• Start on a day you are in a good emotional state. Doing this on a day where you feel like becoming a monk/nun with no worldly possessions is not a good idea.



• Choose a room with books you own in it. (Weeding someone else's personal book collection is a big no-no!)


• Pick one book off the shelf up and ask yourself these questions:

1- Do I love this book? (Heck, lets be honest, Do you even remember OWNING this book!?!)
2- Is this a useful book?
3- Will I use it in the future?
4- Do I trust the research in it?
5- Will I read it again?

If the answer to any of these questions is "No", seriously ask yourself what its doing on your bookshelf. There are lots of other books out there that could use that bookshelf space and that you'd probably like better.

So, there are three choices you face
1. Blow the dust off the top and put it back on the shelf
2. If you didn't even remember owning it, put it in your pile of books to read sometime soon.
3. Get rid of it.

Lets talk about option #3 Getting rid of books.

The lovely thing about this new fangled invention called "the internet" is that it has made the buying and selling of used books so much simpler. I like to sell my used books on Amazon because that's where I've gotten the best prices for them and its the easiest for me to list them as being for sale.

Selling your research books that are no longer useful to you not only frees up bookshelf space, but it can also free up another precious commodity, CASH! That's right, the thing you use to buy more books with!

---

So, in summary:
1- Go through your book collection and figure out what you don't want anymore
2- Sell the books
3- Buy new books that you like




Next post in the series I'll cover how to find books that you like and the whole "try before you buy" concept approach to building a library of books that you love.

Comments

[aliskye.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I will check it out.