| Why
Weed Immigration?
Immigration
has always been a factor in the American social and political
scene.  But
the faces and the homelands of the immigrants continue to
change over the years. Your collection should reflect these
changes and not mirror just a specific time frame.
Suggested
Dewey Numbers to Check:
Most
of the titles on immigration will be found in the 300s.
Check the 304s (factors affecting social behavior), the
305s (specific social groups), the 325s (migration and colonization),
and the 363s (social problems). The fiction and biography
sections will also have titles dealing with the personal
side of immigration. Remember to also check the reference
section and the audiovisual collection.
Specific
Criteria for Weeding:
There
are many wonderful accounts in print of immigrants and their
experiences coming to America in the 1800s and early 1900s.
The nationalities of those immigrants varied over those
years but most traced their roots to Europe.  Since
that time, and especially since 1965 when immigration laws
were changed, the ethnic background of immigrants has switched
to predominately Asian, Latino, and Black. The faces changed,
but many of the emotional and physical struggles remain
the same. Reading of those old struggles can reassure new
immigrants.
A
strong collection on immigration will include both the old
stories and the new. So what is there to weed? You should
be looking at three main criteria: physical condition, bias,
and format. Any book published 20 or so years ago is old
and, if it has been well-used, it is also in bad condition.
There are many new titles on the market now that continue
to tell those old stories. New titles are more likely to
be free of old biases and in more inviting formats (no more
filmstrips!) than the old.
Consider
Weeding Titles Like These:
- America
fever : the story of American immigration, 1970.
- American
immigration policies, 1963.
- Becoming
American : the problems of immigrants and their children,
1970.
- Border
patrol : how U.S. agents protect our borders from illegal
entry, 1974.
- A
history of American immigration : 1820-1958, 1964.
- The
immigrants [filmstrip], 1974.
- Immigration
: its evils and consequences, 1969.
- Immigration
: the dream and the reality [filmstrip], 1970.
- Immigration
laws of the United States: a guide to admission to the United
States, 1953.
- Race
and ethnicity in modern America, 1974.
- They
came to America [filmstrip], 1972.
- We
all came to America [videorecording], 1974.
- World
migration in modern times, 1968.
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