You’ve Done PDA, What About PDW?: Patron-Driven Weeding as Engagement and Collection Management

Abstract

Patron-driven acquisition has become a regular part of the collections development process in many libraries. If we can trust our patrons to provide valuable input on what types of materials belong in the library’s collection, can we trust them to also provide opinions on what should no longer be on our shelves?

The authors look at several aspects of their crowd-sourced weeding experience, including the differences in how students and faculty selected items. While the items students selected inadvertently used many of the same criteria librarians would typically use, did the faculty take a different approach? What are the pitfalls in asking users to contribute in weeding? Did getting the community involved help foster more connectedness to the library?