Less is More: a Practical Guide to Weeding School Library Collections, by Donna J. Baumbach and Linda L. Miller. Published by the American Library Association, 2006. 194 pp.

You know you should weed your collection more but it goes against every fiber of your being to throw away books! That’s the main reason you need to read this book every few years – to remind yourself of all the reasons why you must weed. Another good reason to read it is that it has some very practical tips on how to do a better job weeding, as well as what to do with the books you have weeded and how to go about replacing the gaps in your collection created by weeding.

Less is More is based on the very popular Weed of the Month Club website, www.sunlink.ucf.edu/weed/, created by Florida’s SUNLINK community of K-12 school libraries. From 1997 to 2005 this was the place to go to get updates on how to best weed specific areas of your collection. The book, as well as the website, is advice specifically for school librarians and is collected from the real world experiences of school librarians.

The authors work their way through the Dewey Decimal system, choosing 71 specific areas to weed, criteria to use in weeding and, perhaps most helpful of all, specific titles to look for that should be weeded.

This book is must reading for all school librarians who want to make a tough, unpleasant but necessary job more doable.

Bob Sibert