View this email in your browser

What’s new at the library?

Summer is fast approaching, be on the lookout for more information about this year’s Summer Reading Program!

Upcoming Programs

Calendar of Events

Art Exhibit

Protectors: Saving Biodiversity in the Age of Extinction

A portfolio of fine-art silkscreen prints celebrating those taking extraordinary measures to stop endangered birds, fish, plants, turtles, and other species from vanishing forever.

The exhibit features 12 original pieces produced by the artists of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative. Each depicts an extinct species, an endangered species, and a person fighting to save that species. Among those featured are a tribal elder, an artist, an Indigenous border activist, a retired teacher, and scientists from different backgrounds — all determined to stem the tide of extinction. Exploring everything from community organizing to lockdowns to science education, this project shows the myriad ways anyone and everyone can get involved to protect species from the threats they face.

Protectors is coordinated, curated, and sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity and artist Roger Peet of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.

Recommended Reading

Fiction reads for May

• A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum

• Wellness by Nathan Hill

• Tom Lake by Ann Pachett

• The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

• The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

• Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Recommend a Book

Read a really good book recently that you think other people should read as well? Let us know and we’ll share it in a future newsletter!

Request a Recommendation

Want a personalized recommendation? Fill out the form to let us know what kind of book you’re looking for!

Suggest an Item for purchase

Want to read, watch, or listen to something the library doesn’t own? Let us know and we will consider purchasing it for our collection.

New Books

From the Director

There’s a lot of talk right now concerning book banning, coming from all directions. This is not a column about book banning. But it IS a column about removing books from our collection! For the record, we support the American Library Association’s (ALA) Code of Ethics, to “uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources.”

Wait, so since we support the ALA’s Code of Ethics, why are we removing library materials? Because we’re weeding!

Weeding is one of those things that’s commonplace in libraries, but can seem like something more sinister to the casual observer. In short, weeding is the practice of removing old, unused items from our collection to make room for new items. Just like tending a garden, you need to remove unwanted plants to ensure efficient growth of the crops you are looking to grow. Unlike tending to a garden, you don’t want to remove old weeds to make room for new weeds, so I admit it’s a bit confusing.

OK so I know I said “in short” above, but there’s so much more to say about weeding. Let’s get into the dirt! (Sorry/not sorry about the weeding pun.) Weeding is done regularly. This fiscal year, we weeded an average of 180 titles a month, including but not limited to books, movies, audiobooks, and across all reading levels. We do this - we HAVE to do this - in order to put more books on our shelves. Without weeding, we wouldn't have room to order anything new! Imagine the cost to the taxpayers if, instead of weeding we just built on a new wing every few years to accommodate the additional materials we added! This year, we've also added an average of 115 titles to our collection per month. While that might sound like we're removing more than we're taking in, many of the titles we remove are damaged or lost. Additionally, we are behind on weeding and need to make up for times when this wasn’t a priority.

Before deciding to remove an item from our collection that's on our shelves, we print a “dusty book list,” which is a report of every item in that type that has not been checked out for a number of years. While our rubric may vary between item types, we try to ensure that we only weed titles that are physically damaged or unused. Although that isn't always the case - if it's a rare title, for example, we would be less likely to remove it than a title with many other copies in the MidYork Library System collection. Classics may be removed from time to time, but before taking it off our shelves, we make sure that it meets with the current standard for weeding. Generally, weeded materials have not circulated for three to five years. By comparison, new items often circulate dozens of times a year.

Weeded materials are either donated to the Friends of the Library to be put in the Book Nook sale, donated to local agencies, added to local Little Free Libraries, or are disposed of properly. Disposing of old hardcover books, in particular, is a necessary part of the process, and involves removing the pages from the binding, as the pages are recyclable and the covers are not. I imagine the sight of library employees cutting up books in our collection may seem sinister, but this is very much a normal part of our workflow.

One more thing - we often are forced to recycle donations made to us without permission. That well-meaning box of books you didn’t ask the desk about before leaving it outside our door? There’s a good chance it was discarded immediately. Please ask before you donate used materials, they often end up in our recycling bins! If you need help recycling them yourself, ask us for advice, we’re pros!

Thank you for reading, don’t mind the weeding, and remember to vote for the library’s budget on May 21!

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly at [email protected].

HOURS

Monday - Thursday    10 A.M. - 7 P.M.Friday   10 A.M. - 5 P.M.Saturday    9 A.M. - 3 P.M.

Copyright (C) " target="_blank">unsubscribe