Yes, Delete It!

Many communities in Alberta are facing huge infrastructure challenges over the next few years. Our towns are growing exponentially, roads need to be cared for and some cities are finding themselves penniless! How can it be that in oil rich Alberta, cities such Fort McMurray, Cold Lake and even Edmonton cannot keep up with this growth? I am not sure of the answer, but I see the same issues may start to come up right here in Morinville.

Our library is 3300 square feet. We serve a population base of nearly 7,000 in the town and about 1/3rd of 30,000 people in Sturgeon County. We are desperate for more space, but with funding issues and delays in building by about 2 – 4 years, we are looking at remaining in this space for another 2 – 5 years. That’s a little hard to swallow, but we must.

How do we handle it? To start, we look at what we can do make the space more appealing and more meaningful. Not just to the staff here but to our patrons. We plan to reorganize the physical space to make it more family friendly and to better organize the collections.

Our biggest challenge that we are facing however, is that our shelves are overflowing with books. It seems wrong somehow to say that we have too many books, but right now we do have too many books. So we cull. We weed. We have become ruthless in some areas, just so that we have room to move around and our patrons will have some level of comfort while visiting.

Many librarians have fears about culling: What if I’m removing the only copy in existence? As soon as I remove this, someone is going to ask for it! etc. True, we do ask these questions. But if the bottom line is that we can only move sideways in the library and it’s going to be this way for sometime, then it becomes easier to make those decisions.

And, in some ways, it can be somewhat liberating! As a very smart librarian said to me: Why have 70% circulation when you can have 100% circulation by removing those items that are not moving off the shelves? I tell you, that question helped me find my resolve. It’s so much easier to tell the staff, yes delete it! I tell you, it feels good in so many ways. The staff and volunteers who shelve don’t have to fight to find a place for a book; patrons can actually find what they are looking for.

One final bonus: we have awesome book sales! So at the very least, while we are removing something, we are generating some much needed revenue back in to the library.

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