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.

Na Gorushke, Na Gore*: Weeding in the Secret Garden, pt. ix

So I started weeding the Russian collection this week.

Ужас!!!

(Oh, the horror!)

I tapped a few colleagues for help and acquired a nice list of Cyrillic to English alphabets, as well as common library terms. Also found several links to the LOC website.

Plodding forward.

UPDATE: I guess popular literature can be found in any language. In addition to the Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitzyn, I'm finding Russian-language copies of titles by John Grisham and James Patterson, as well as Forrest Gump, and--wait for it--Fifty Shades of Grey!

Also doing some re-organizing.  People see 891.7 and think it can go right next to 891.73 just because the author is the same. NOT. The nice thing is that some of our multi-volume collections are looking a bit more whole again. Doing my bit for the FLP.

Onward.

*--Traditional Russian folk song

UPDATE: Just weeded the Russian translation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  That will be sacrilege to some, but it was in poor condition, and had only circulated seven times in 21 years (and not since 2005)
UPDATE II: Just finished the Russian collection. 14.6% weeded out (82 out of 590 titles), mostly condition issues. Asian next, then adding the new Arabic titles.

Onward.