Wednesday, July 26, 2017

End Of The Line*: Weeding in the Secret Garden, part x

Just finished the Chinese collection.  More of the usual titles--50 Shades, Harry Potter, Grisham, Danielle Steele, and a lot of non-descript books with what seems to be the same pretty, young woman on the cover. Always straight, jet-black hair, high cheekbones, a positive, smiling face.

Final total 217 out, 552 in, 8 dropped out of system and need to be put back in. About a 39% rate for discard--not as bad as Italian, but not as good as Russian.

Two more cases of Vietnamese lit and I am DONE with weeding the World Language collection. I have a feeling that that last group is going to shrink, rapidly. Stay tuned.

Not to say that the collection doesn't need maintenance--a lot of the Chinese titles were classified as hardback when they were clearly trade paperback.  It would have bogged me down to have to change all those while weeding.

After I finish weeding I can check and discharge our new Arabic titles and make room for new Chinese titles coming our way.

Onward.

*--The Traveling Wilburys, 1987.

UPDATE: Finished the last Vietnamese item at about 2:30.  Made the suggestion to my supervisor that we should find a new home for the roughly 300 V-language items, 78% of which hadn't circulated in over five years.  She concurred and is looking for a new home for them.

Ditto for the Chinese items we weeded.  The Chinese titles circulate far better than Vietnamese, but there's so many of them, including some listed in SIRSI (Integrated Library System) as "Chinese book". SMH.

Final totals for weeding World Language:
French 348 314 47.4
German 188 125 39.9
Italian 109 146 57.2
Spanish 636 412 39.3
Russian  512 87 14.5
Chinese 552 217 28.2
Japanese 1 0 n/a*
Vietnamese 64 223 77.7
Grand totals 2410 1524 38.7
*stray Japanese title, had fallen out of system.

EPILOGUE: There's still some maintenance to do in this area. Way too many of the titles (especially Chinese) used the default AHARDBACK (adult hardback) classification when they're clearly Trade Paperbacks.  Estimate that there are hundreds of titles like this. 

Onward again...till next time.

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