Hundreds of Things to Do With Old Books

When you are in the midst of weeding hundreds of books, the task of what to do with them is always in the back of your mind. Are they torn apart and placed in the recycle bin? Do you donate them to the local public library? Can you have your own book sale to raise a few dollars for the school media center? Well, not all the books you are getting rid of could be considered up-to-date and I'm sure you wouldn't want a student using that information for a paper. So....as opposed to trashing some of them, here's a list of resources which have some great ideas how to reuse those old books.

9 Cool Things to Do With Old Books into Something Cool

10 Creative Ways to Recycle Old Ways

15 Creative DIY Projects Featuring Old Recycled Books

20 Awesome Ways to Reuse Old Books

20 Ways to Decorate with Book Pages

50+ Ways to Repurpose Old Books

80 Awesome Ideas for All Your Old or Unwanted Books

Art From Old Books

Creative Ways to Recycle Old Books



How to Reuse Old Books for Homemade Gifts

New Life For Old Books- wonderful, creative Pinterest board with great ideas

Stylish Projects From Vintage Books- from Better Homes and Gardens



Ways to Reuse an Old Book- from the Huff Post Green

Subscribe to this blog in a reader
Follow me on Twitter

It's All About the Book: When Controversy Gets in the Way

I am currently involved in book inventory, with weeding taking place simultaneously. Currently in the biography section, I came across Lance Armstrong's book entitled "It's Not About the Bike", which details his battle with cancer. Thinking about Mr. Armstrong's recent fall from grace involving steroid use, (and his decision not to cooperate with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's investigation of performance-enhancing drug use in cycling) I am trying to decide whether or not to pull his book from the shelf.  I found these opinions on the web:

Australian Library Puts Lance Armstrong Books in the Fiction Section

Lance, Lies, and the Library

Manly Public Library's Solution

What are you going to do in your school library? I am interested in your opinion!

Pre-Construction...Construction...Finished Project By Tomorrow?

Yesterday was a blur. Sometime in the mid-morning, the custodians came in with our principal and I was informed that the workers would be arriving shortly to begin construction in the library. I immediately needed to clear three bookshelves (both sides) so that the wall would be able to pass through that area. Luckily, our principal provided many student helpers to move large quantities of books. Of course I was more concerned with keeping the books in numerical order, something that only I and my library council members understood. By the end of the day, I had lost my glasses, filled many tabletops with books, and prayed that teachers would claim some of the hundreds of books I didn't want to throw out.According to one of the workers, the project should be done tomorrow, three days of work. No new bookcases. New walls, though. I'm keeping a positive attitude, because I've been told that with classes no longer in the library (we had a couple of periods which were class-free) I can look forward to making the library-media center the center of the school again. I'll let you know on Monday how everything looks. Are you in a similar position? Please leave your comments? Thank you to those who posted yesterday!

The Weeding Game: Saying Goodbye to Reference Books

The librarian before me was a pack-rat. She didn't throw away anything! Our school's collection hadn't been weeded in decades, and the average age was 1976.  I began to weed and feed the collection five years ago, correcting spine labels and database entries. Here I am today about to enter the "more aggressive" stage of weeding our reference section, and I find myself feeling sorry for the dozens upon dozens of books which have outlived their usefulness. To be honest, I have felt SO bad that I have laid out displays for each department, hoping that teachers will take some of these books to their classrooms. So now that you're wondering why I feel so attached, let me explain our budget situation: when I first arrived five years ago, the numbers were already pretty low. Given the recent super cuts (no, not the hair salon) from NJ Governor Christie, (our public school teachers have been vilified by him) what little I had was cut over 94%!!! So I have learned to use and reuse and reuse, if you know what I mean.

With the giant barrels lined up, I have weeded a few hundred books. Now comes the really fun part which is deleting each barcode. How do YOU weed your reference books? Do you think that print reference is close to dead? I've given you 14 resources to help you through this process. Please answer the survey at the end of the post.

Attack Your Collection: Weeding with CREW

View more PowerPoint from Dawn Krause

Be Proactive: Weed- blog post from School Library Monthly

Determining Use of an Academic Library Reference Collection 

The Horrors of Weeding in Buffalo - the comments are as interesting as this public library's take

Is Print Reference Dead?- written by Sue Polanka; includes survey results from ALA librarians (2007)

Weed 'Em and Weep!- slide presentation by Awful Library Books

Weeding Guidelines By Subject

View more documents from Ed Sadowski


Weeding Library Collections- this wiki includes great ideas on what to do with weeded books, including  book sales, donation and more.

Weeding Library Collections: A Selected Annotated Bibliography for Library Collection Evaluation- from ALA

Weeding and Maintenance of Reference Collections- book by Linda S. Katz

Weeding Presentation

View more PowerPoint from Jennifer Peterson

Weeding Reference Materials (Lis 60610)

View more PowerPoint from guestab667e

Weeding Your Library- tips from teacher-librarian Cindy

Weeding Your Library Collection- here's how they weed in New Zealand's schools
 

Do you feel that print reference is dead?

Yes, let's ditch 'em

Yes, but it's going to be a slow death

No, patrons still use reference in my library

No, but weeding must take place often

or View Results

Create your own poll at Flisti.com