How to Feed and Weed Your Collection | Weeding Guidelines

Things We've Dug Up While Weeding | Reader Comments

Why Weed Curiosities and Wonders?

Titles on the subject of curiosities and wonders attract a broad range of students, from the most avid reader to the most reluctant. These titles will circulate! But, outdated content will quickly be a negative reflection on your collection when detected by the reader. Or worse yet, it will be a professional disservice to the reader NOT detecting that something is no longer a curiosity or wonder!

Suggested Dewey Numbers to Check:

The good news on weeding this topic area is that the majority of items to be reviewed will be found in the 001.9s (controversial knowledge) and the 031-032s (miscellaneous facts). The bad news is that you may also have titles of this type scattered across the collection with their subject areas such as the sciences. Also, don't forget to check the reference and audiovisual collection.

Specific Criteria for Weeding:

Since titles in this subject area tend to be heavy circulators, first look for books or AV items that are in poor physical shape. Replace as necessary. When replacing, try to find books with high visual appeal to attract those reluctant readers. Next look at the publication dates and think in terms of the expansion of knowledge in the last 20 (since 1980) or 30 (since 1970) years! Many things that might have been unexplained 20 or 30 years ago no longer fit in that category. Now there are new unexplained phenomenons as well as new explanations for today's students to contemplate. Let our students spend their mental energy on today's curiosities and wonders, not those of yesterday. Also look for titles with any underlying gender bias such as those implying that only boys are curious about the wonders of subject areas like science or inventions.

Consider Weeding Titles Like These:

• The boys' book of modern chemical wonders, 1966.
• Children's guide to knowledge : wonders of nature, marvels of science and man, 1971.
• Extraterrestial intervention : the evidence, 1974.
• Forgotten worlds : scientific secrets of the ancients and their warning for our time, 1973.
• Investigating the unexplained : a compendium of disquieting mysteries of the natural world, 1972.
• More oddities and enigmas, 1973.
• Myths of the space age, 1967.
• Oddities : a book of unexplained facts, 1965.
• Strange stories, amazing facts : stories that are bizarre, unusual, odd, astonishing, and often incredible, 1967.
• Ten thousand wonderful things : comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations, 1970
• Unexplained facts : enigmas and curiosities, 1965.