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Several Berkeley library employees contend that a stepped-up effort to thin the library’s collection in the past year has been so rushed that valuable books were carted off in dumpsters. 

“There was pressure to do it quickly,” said Anne-Marie Miller, a 34-year library veteran, who added that management had a stronger than normal role in going through the collection. “In all my years working there I had never seen a book weeding project done that way.” 

Book weeding is a continuous process to keep collections current and relevant. In Berkeley, library officials said there had been minimal weeding in recent years since the central library returned to its larger main building in 2002. However, this past year has been an opportune time to eliminate outdated and unwanted books because the library has had to remove every volume from its shelves to tag them with palm-sized radio antennas, which this July is scheduled to replace bar codes as the library’s book tracking system. 

According to librarians, unlike past rounds of weeding when librarians scoured shelfs looking for damaged or irrelevant books, the latest round forced librarians to make quick decisions on truckloads of books that staff members responsible for tagging books with the radio devices pulled aside for being in bad condition.  

Andrea Segall, a librarian in the art and music department, said she was overwhelmed with trucks of books to consider removing from the collection, which she said didn’t give her enough time to properly inspect them. 

“I couldn’t leave truckloads lying around,” she said. “I had to make snap decisions. It was much too hasty a process.” 

The radio devices and a reorganization plan that includes staff layoffs have sapped morale at the library and contributed to a growing labor-management divide that Library Director Jackie Griffin thinks might be behind the criticisms over weeding. 

“Some people at this point are trying to create negative feelings about library management in any way they can,” she said. 

Several of the library staff interviewed said although there wasn’t a quota they felt pressure to remove more books from the collection this year than in past years. One of their most pressing concerns, they said, was the condition of the social science collection, which faced the most severe reductions.  

But Francisca Goldsmith, the library’s collection manager, countered that librarians have had amble time to thin out their sections, faced no pressure to remove more books than usual, and that the final tallies showed minimum upheaval to the library’s roughly 500,000 volume collection. 

Over the past year the library removed about 2 percent of its collection and about 4 percent of its social science collection, she said. About one-third of those books have been replaced, she added. While the final tally this year shows more book removals than in recent years, Goldsmith said it is less than the 8 to 10 percent the library averaged ten years ago. 

Goldsmith said she expected the library’s collection, despite the recent weeding would remain consistent at around 500,000 volumes and that the library had the capacity to add more volumes. 

For Patrick Regan, a library aide, his concerns about book weeding and management are interconnected. “It’s a big deal to people like me who think the people in charge are making so many bad decision so why should they be trusted with weeding,” he said. 

Regan said he has taken six undamaged books off the weeding pile, including a book about anarchist Emma Goldman and books by children’s author Daniel Pinkwater. “It bugged me to see his books there, because he’s great.” 

Regan said there is a perception among library employees that aggressive weeding may be motivated by the library wanting to save money on radio tags that cost around 50 cents apiece. Library management said that was not the case. 

Book weeding has sparked controversies at other libraries. In 1996, the San Francisco Public Library set off a firestorm when it moved into its new building with fewer books than it had previously. The issue is at the core of a larger debate over the mission of public libraries. 

Alan Bern, a reference and teen librarian at the Berkeley Library, said he saw nothing wrong with the recent weeding process, and said he favors the practice. 

“It’s not our mission to give people anything and everything,” Bern said. “That is the job of a research library. We have to balance the needs of the community and what they want to read.” 

The weeding practice mostly targets books that are either out of date or so worn that they are no longer of value. Moldy books are instantly removed, Goldsmith said, because mold spores could spread throughout the shelf.  

Older reference books must also be removed because they may contain information that is no longer relevant or factual, Goldsmith said. She added that the social science section, which lost the greatest number of books, is home to numerous reference guides like Nolo Press, a self-help guide to the law, and investment manuals, that all needed to be updated.  

“An investment guide from the 1980s isn’t going to be helpful because the market has changed considerably,” she said. 

Goldsmith added that weeded books are typically recycled because Friends of the Library rejects rejects them for sale in their store because the books are either out of date or in no condition to be sold. Typically the store accepts extra copies of former best sellers that no longer have widespread appeal. 

Goldsmith also said library management started pressing librarians to pay more attention to weeding last January—eight months before the library started removing books from the shelf to tag with radio devices. 

“This process was not more hurried,” she said. 

Goldsmith added that the Children’s Department, for example, weed books consistently so they could proceed more slowly. Other departments, she said, hadn’t weeded books in the three years so they had one year to do three years worth of work. 

Library protocols, she said, call for a team of two to three librarians to go through shelves and discuss which books should be removed. Their selections are then passed through managers for final approval. 

Library rules call for each librarian to spend one hour a week weeding and three hours a week selecting new books. Librarians interviewed said the recent urgency of installing the radio devices and chronic staff shortages have made it difficult to adhere to all of their tasks.  

Reference Librarian Jane Scantlebury said, “We’re so understaffed now that none of us is doing our job particularly well.”