When I was in the 5th grade I had to write a report on Prehistoric man. I remember going to the library and gathering information (pre-internet) from encyclopedias, books, magazines and any other sources I could find. I wrote what I thought was a great report, full of sources and information. To my dismay, when I got the report back, the teacher had circled an entire section in red ink and written “Information outdated, check your sources.” I remember being quite upset and thinking to myself, “What do you mean check your sources? All the information I got came from the library. Why would it be there if it wasn’t accurate?” After all, at least to my 5th grade mind, if it was in the library and in the reference section, it was okay to use for a report. Why would a library keep out of date reference materials on their shelves?
Which, brings me to the point of this whole blog. Information can become outdated in the blink of an eye. Constant discoveries in the fields of science and medicine for instance, render a source accurate one day and inaccurate the next. Take the planet Pluto for example which is not a planet anymore. What do you do with older books on the shelves that talk about the "planet" Pluto?
At the Ryan-Matura Library we have begun the process of “weeding” the reference collection. This means the librarians are going through the books one by one and deciding which volumes should stay and which ones no longer contain accurate or relevant information. The information contained in these outdated versions of our books can be found on the internet or in our electronic book collection. As we continue this project, we will be making room for new books and resources. Some people might see this as purging the library of books, however, our goal is to create a more user friendly library environment and to provide our users with the most relevant and up to date information available.
Once a book is removed from the shelf it is either sent to Better World Books http://www.betterworldbooks.com/info.aspx or recycled. Both are good uses for old information.
