Weeding the personal collection
Tuesday, October 31, 2023 at 01:23PM
One of my first nationally published professional articles celebrated the benefits of weeding books. Published in School Library Journal in 1990, "Weeding the Neglected Collection" tells the story of why and how I reduced a small high school print collection from 13,500 to 7,000 volumes - and the effort’s benefits. All in a rather amusing style, if I do say so myself. If weeding is good for public and public school collections, is it not also good for home collections? But I find selecting books for discard from the bookshelves in my own living room, home office, and bedroom to be even more challenging. These are my books after all. And my books are not just stories or information. They are touchstones of memory as well. That old travel guide from the 90s is not just about Paris, but about my son’s and my visit to the Louvre. The books of quotations and advice like The Peter Principle remind me of lessons that I learned while beginning to manage others in my role as technology coordinator. That old novel still conjures up the joy of the protagonist’s wins and the sadness of their losses. The picture book is an autographed copy, acquired after having a beer at a library conference with the author themselves. Perhaps the most difficult books I got rid of were those in which some of my own writing appeared. I wrote many chapters or introductions for books over the years such as Ethics in School Librarianship: A Reader edited by Carol Simpson. While I long ago tossed the boxes and boxes of magazines and journals in which my regular columns and articles appeared, I kept these books, despite not having opened them for a couple decades. Their presence, I suppose, symbolized the same thing as the small plaques from professional associations adorning my home office - that I was once a contributing member in the field of education. For those of us who love books, getting rid of the physical object feels immoral. Happily my old children’s books and novels and travel books were graciously accepted by the public library to be sold at book sales they hold to raise funds. But the public library made it clear they did NOT want textbooks or books in poor physical condition. My quick research showed conflicting advice on whether to recycle (glue in bindings of books is not good) or simply add old books to the landfill. (Magazines went into recycling; books to the landfill.) Tossing books in the garbage bin hurts. If such agony is involved, why weed personal collections at all then? I do it for the sake of my kids who will one day have to deal with my physical junk as my siblings and I are dealing with my mother's junk after having downsized to a senior living apartment. My children and grandchildren have too busy and interesting lives to spend time reading decades old professional writings outside their fields anyway. And overstuffed bookshelves have never been my thing. Now on to thinning out my DVDs and CDs!
Reader Comments (5)
Doug, I have been cleaning out my house. Weeding out my book collection is easy…I pack it up and give the boxes to my daughter, who is an avid book collector. But old magazines where my writing appears, I have been tossing along with old job evaluations, certificates from past workshops, etc. I had to clean out my parents’ house and apartment. I kept much of their stuff for years, the pain of opening files and folders, unpleasant. Yet, I am glad I have ripped and tossed old content. After all, who will care about my old teeball medal, or my high school graduation plaque? Or my 8th grade graduation certificate? Or my childhood drawings and writings? The people who cared about that history are dead, and I only keep what inspires me anew.
In 50 years, it is all landfill material (if not sooner!). Let it go.
It served its purpose and fulfilled its purpose. Let us move on and fulfill our purpose, wasting no more time on a past that made us who we are today. 🙂
I’m with you. I did the personal library purge in the last year. When I retired I brought home boxes of my personal collection items from school. Boxes not opened. Time to purge. Painful yes. Satisfaction afterwards yes. We made huge contributions to our profession, but now is the time for the new ones to make their marks
Hi Miguel,
I truly appreciate your comment. Some comfort in knowing one is not the only person struggling a bit with weeding. I will keep my HS (and college) graduation certificates, but the little plaques etc - not so much. One sense of comfort I have is that I have kept the final drafts of all my books, article, and columns in word processing format and stored online. When the time comes, my children can simply delete!
Happy fall down there in Texas!
Doug
Hi Terry,
I often felt the same way about the need to step aside and let younger and brighter minds (with a different generational perspective) work on the challenges we faced. We did good but they might do even better. Now if we could just get a bunch of old politicians on both sides of the aisle to feel the same way!
Doug
I have no problem weeding out music and movies, but the books are so difficult for me. It's an important task, though, and good for you for doing it!
Hi Mandy,
We tend to have sentimental attachments to books that we may not have for CDs or DVDs. I DID have a little trouble getting rid of all my old VHS tapes since I remember my son watching so many of them as a little kid...
Doug