I am reaching the end of a major weeding project at the library where I work. Most people think of weeding as the removal or pulling up of undesirable or unwanted plants in the yard or garden. But for those of us in the library world, weeding is the process of pulling outdated, unused, no longer needed books off the shelf.
I've been working in the reference section and it's been a walk through recent history. Most of the books that I'm weeding were used before there was such a thing as the Internet. You had massive collections of books on philosophy, religion, social movements, law, quotations, current author and newsworthy individual biographies, history, and countries of the world. It was sort of a "just in case" type of book inventory; you needed all of these materials in case a patron came in and wanted information pertaining to those fields. Now of course, anyone can search the Internet for information, however incredible the information may be.
Working through the collection, all the books and series published in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond I can't help but remember what I was doing during those times-where I was working, what was going on in the world, what I thought I'd be doing in the future. Now I am in that future and looking back. I'm finding it hard not to mourn the loss of my youth, my innocence and my faith in the goodness of life. Everything seems so much darker now. Does everyone feel this way as they grow older? Does it help to be more successful, have more money?
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