To toss or not to toss, that is the question!
Libraries tend to be the dumping ground for a lot of people. The teacher is retiring and decides to donate all of her classroom decorations going back to the 70s to the Children’s Department. Someone’s children are growing up and they have toys they don’t want anymore….. that are broken. You have a doll collection going back to the 60s that you want to let us display but then also want us to store for you until you decide you want to look at it again 3 years later.
The Public Library is just that- public. And if you ask any Librarian they will probably tell you that their library is underfunded. Most librarians in the U.S. make less an hour than fast food workers.
If they can’t pay the librarians very much, they also can’t fund all of the thousands of programs and ideas the librarians have. So donations are appreciated! So much! Donations can be such a blessing!
But they can also be a curse. We can receive a lot of sub-par things. We never want to make our patrons feel as if we don’t appreciate them but sometimes the things that are donated aren’t worth keeping. Just because it has sentimental value to you, doesn’t mean it’s a good quality object. Just because your kid loved this toy that is super loud and has to have 17 D batteries to run and sits at 4 feet tall, doesn’t mean it’s a feasible toy to keep in the library space.
So donate away! We appreciate it! Give us things! BUT don’t be upset when you come back three years later and ask to see that yellow lamp covered in a paisley lampshade that you had since you were a little girl but you donated it to us….. and it’s gone. We may have upcycled it. We may have used it for an event and then stuck it in storage. We may have decided we didn’t have room for it and given it to the local thriftstore.
We appreciate your donations but we really only have so much space. My motto tends to be- If we haven’t used it in the last three years, toss it.
We recently went through a construction process in our children’s department and we went through EVERYTHING we had and purged. We had a giant pile at the end! We had heads for kids to wear to act out The 3 Little Pigs but we haven’t used them in over 5 years. They were cute. They were Paper Mache. They were donated by a teacher. But we just didn’t have the space anymore. And honestly, we didn’t need to feel guilty about getting rid of them!
If you’re a librarian who needs to purge and get rid of things that have been donated, don’t feel guilty. Understand that you are doing your best and, ultimately, you are the one who knows what your department needs, not the patron. The patron doesn’t always know best. The patron doesn’t organize and run your programs. The patron shows up for the program- you do all the work. So give yourself permission to purge. Give yourself permission to breathe. You do a lot for your patrons. Purge your workspace for you.
Keep Sparkling
-B
The Sparkling Librarian 