Spanish Eyes*: Weeding in the Secret Garden, iv

Continuing with the world language weeding:

• Interesting titles in Spanish: Jane Eyre, Fahrenheit 451,

• Had to discard two old copies of Cervantes' Don Quixote--I hesitated but one was missing pages and the other's spine was crumbling.  I sent it out with someone who was leaving work early (Man of La Mancha reference).

• Most interesting find so far: a two volume compilation of interviews of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsberg, Lou Harrison, Ned Rorem and others entitled "Consules de Sodoma". Musicians know Harrison and Rorem as prominent 20th century composers;   I'll have to seek out the English translation some day.

1999*: Weeding in the Secret Garden, part iii

Finished the Italian collection today. Discarded 63% of the collection for poor circulation and condition issues.  Many, many items not circulated since before 1999. A few more in the 1/1/1980 category, and numerous books the record of which fell out of the system.

My supervisor alluded to what may be replacing everything that I'm removing, but nothing firm as of yet. She did say Arabic titles may be coming in, so we'll see what happens there.

Onward to the Spanish collection next week.

Cheers.

*--Prince, 1999, 1999. 

Language of Love* : Weeding in the Secret Garden, part ii

Some highlights of my time weeding our foreign language collection:

• Samuel Beckett in French
• Tom Sawyer, Old Man and the Sea, , and Dashiell Hammett in Italian
• LOTS of extra work to put titles back in the system--and they'll probably be weeded when no one checks them out for another year.
• French Collection--discarded 47% of titles
• German Collection--discarded 43% of titles
• Italian Collection--well over 50% so far
• longest period between last checkout and today--37 years, 5 months (January 1980)
• many items with 20+ years since last checkout

No, an item's lack of circulation isn't the only criterion for weeding. 

Onward...

*--Dan Fogelberg, Windows and Walls, 1984.