Weeding adventures are continuing. The Library is full of books and some sections are exploding. We are having an overflow in 300s. Some others are close. But some sections are liberated. It seems that I'm in the point of my career where I'm working and learning on weeding books a lot, so in the upcoming posts I'll write more about the weeding adventures in various sections.
In this post I'm introducing MUSTIE, the criteria I'm using for considering weeding an item from the library's collection. I stumbled upon this criteria while reading and using the book "The Weeding Handbook: A Shelf-by-Shelf Guide" by Rebecca Vnuk, and it's an awesome criteria.
Acronym MUSTIE stands for:
- M= Misleading - factually inaccurate
- U= Ugly - worn beyond mending or rebinding
- S= Superceded - by a new edition of by a much better book on the subject
- T= Trivial - of no discernible literary or scientific merit
- I= Irrelevant to the needs and interests of the library's community
- E= Elsewhere - the material is easily obtainable from another library
As you can see, these criterias are super useful and helpful while weeding, and they often help me when I struggle about the decision about a book.