<\/p>\n
Of course I took the collection development class. Of course I learned about children\u2019s literature. I took every class my school offered on the subject, and have not stopped studying it since. But no one ever taught me how to weed an antique book collection! For the past few weeks, I have been weeding a rather large collection of children\u2019s books that have gathered dust on the shelves at our headquarters building for nearly 25 years. We\u2019ve never needed the space before, so the collection has truly not been seriously weeded in that amount of time. Needless to say, I am finding books that have a last circ date in the 90\u2019s (and some even longer than that!) Titles such as \u201cChouchou\u201d\u009d by Francoise (the 1958 story of a little donkey who has had a hard life), and Margaret Wise Brown\u2019s \u201cSteamroller\u201d\u009d, which is my new favorite Christmas book, featuring Daisy, who gets not a doll, nor books or candy for Christmas, but a steamroller which goes out of control and squashes flat anything (and anyone) in her way. Those are just some of the gems. Who has seen the wordless book, \u201cRolling Downhill\u201d\u009d by Ruth Carroll? How about a circa 1940 reprint of Randolph Caldecott\u2019s \u201cSing a Song for Sixpence\u201d\u009d? Most of these books have never even heard of an ISBN. I am finding books that need to be removed because of content, such as \u201cPicnic at Babar\u2019s\u201d\u009d for the racist portrayal of the natives in Africa, and the controversial \u201cFive Chinese Brothers\u201d\u009d by Claire Bishop. So, library school, where art thou when I need you? What do I keep in a back-up collection in case someone wants to study these books? Some are the last remaining copy in the province, but are they really worth keeping?\u00a0 I used to think weeding was easy, but this task has me continually scratching my head and searching the internet for help.\u00a0 This is a daunting assignment, but my years of reading and my solid background in children\u2019s lit, learned at the feet of the great Anne McConnell, are keeping my head above water. So far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of course I took the collection development class. Of course I learned about children\u2019s literature. I took every class my school offered on the subject, and have not stopped studying it since. But no one ever taught me how to weed an antique book collection! For the past few weeks, I have been weeding a rather large collection of children\u2019s books that have gathered dust on the shelves at our headquarters building for nearly 25 years. We\u2019ve never needed the space before, so the collection has truly not been seriously weeded in that amount of time. Needless to say, I am finding books that have a last circ date in the 90\u2019s (and some even longer than that!) Titles such as \u201cChouchou\u201d\u009d by Francoise (the 1958 story of a little donkey who has had a hard life), and Margaret Wise Brown\u2019s \u201cSteamroller\u201d\u009d, which is my new favorite Christmas book, featuring…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[66,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-angela-reynolds","category-childrens-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}