Decisions, decisions

Decision making is a major part of my job. I should say is THE major part of my job. I make decisions regarding books to read, lessons to teach, books to order, books to withdraw, etc. The first three are primarily positive tasks. Whereas, book withdrawal is basically a negative task that seems on the surface contradictory to librarianship, but in a well tended library it is a necessary act. Without it the shelves would be full of old books with archaic information, books that no one check out. Not all sad old books can be resurrected and brought to new life with a lively booktalk. Many must find their way to book afterlife. In this school district that would be to the warehouse and eventual auction. After I have gone through the process of physically withdrawing the older and/or unused books from our system, I then offer most of them to the teachers for their classroom libraries. I don't offer the ones that are hopelessly dated, no temporary stopover before afterlife for them. Once in a while I will come across a book that may have been used little or none as a library book but I know will have great use in a classroom setting. One such book is Puniddles by Bruce and Brett McMillan, copyright 1982. The McMillans challenged "readers" to discover compound words based on pairs of black and white photographs. This book could easily be reissued with new color photography which would probably make it a hit. As is, I placed the book in a new home in an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classroom. I dropped in on the class recently and the teacher was happy to share that the book was at that moment being used for a lesson! Book resurrection can happen under the right circumstances! It is nice to see decision successful!