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Weeding

Guidelines & tools for weeding.

Quick Introduction

OPAL has provided an instance of Weeding Helper to assist in weeding decisions. With the tool you can import a list created in Sierra and:

  • Sort the list by call number, date, checkouts, etc.
  • Mark the ‘Shape’ or condition of an item
  • Mark an item as ‘Best Book’ or ‘Classic’
  • Mark the ‘Fate’ of an item for weeding, saving, etc.
  • View the number of circulating titles in OhioLINK 

Creating a List

First you will need to create a list of items in Sierra and notify opalhelp@ohionet.org when it’s ready:

  1. Open the Create Lists function in Sierra.
  2. Choose an empty list for your institution.
  3. Click Search Records and name your file.
  4. Change Store Record Type to Item

  5. Make sure the file size is 2.5 MG or less.

The parameters you use for the list are entirely up to you; however, it’s most effective to choose items from a single location (aka location code). You may also wish to limit your search in other ways that make sense for the weeding task at hand. For example, you might:

  • Limit to a call number range
  • Limit to items older than three years
  • Limit to items with fewer than two checkouts

For call number ranges, searching index ranges works best.

Using Weeding Helper

Once you have provided OPALHelp with your list, we will process the file through Weeding Helper. If there are more than 2000 items, we may split the file. Weeding Helper will check each item against OhioLINK one-by-one, so this can take some time, sometimes overnight. We'll return a spreadsheet containing the INN-Reach data and OPAL holdings counts for review.