Weeding, weeding

I know there is a rule that one is not supposed to weed the collection in one's first year at a school.  I have broken that rule.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The age of the collection is not good.  The average age is 1998--16 years old.  There is so much to do.  I started out working on fiction, innocently enough just moving books to spread out the collection a little.  But as I moved books, it was obvious that some of them just had to go.  How many Dear America and books of that oeuvre are there?!?!?!  We had over 200.  HAD! Those books are gone, gone, gone.

There were lots of old and ugly books, and after discarding them, I put them on a cart called "Old & Ugly" and the students still scooped them up. Here is one of  my favorites:

I just love that little blurb next to the kids' heads: "Is gorgeous as great as it looks?"  If only someone could answer that...

But this book has been my all-time favorite, and I even learned a little something about James Michener AND South Pacific when I looked it up:

Priceless, just priceless.
There is a lot to do, but I've done a preliminary weed of picture books and biography, in addition to fiction.  Non-fiction is the crazy-big part that is left to do, but I seriously don't even know where to start.  Between the outdated titles and the mis-labeled (damn that Melvil Dewey!!) books, I will have to touch and fix every single book if it doesn't get weeded.

I think that I won't even start non-fiction until Christmas.  There are a lot of other things to do before tackling that half of the library.  But it's exciting!! I love it!