Wednesday, October 01, 2008

so many books, so little shelf space

Once again I find myself in the place many many libraries/librarians find themselves - without space. Things were totally fine this summer when about half the Teen fiction collection was checked out, but now that school has started again and people have returned all their books my shelves are overflowing. I'm basically at capacity. I've got to weed hard and heavy if I want the new books I'm constantly ordering to fit. So I am. I'm weeding books that haven't checked out in a year OR that have an avg circ of less than 3-4 checkouts a year during their "lifetime". Sadly this still isn't going to free up as much space as I need. This seems like heavy weeding to me - but is it really? What are other libraries with limited space doing?

Here's why this is a depressing problem that is never going to go away (unless something miraculous happens). Our budget is split up largely by circ stats. I have a pretty decent budget and I get to buy lots of awesome things for the teen collection. These awesome things circ well. I get rid of what I can through weeding, to make room for more awesome things, but it still doesn't leave me with enough room. I have no where to grow. I have very little space to display. I've already staked out as much of the library as I can for the foreseeable future. Where do I put the books?!?