I just went through and weeded out much of our reference collection. Hardly any of it was getting used at this point and was either woefully out of date or replaced by digital resources. What I did keep are the few resources that I want to make sure are in the building if people need them - *101 Legal Forms for Personal Use* (NOLO), the Michigan building/electrical/plumbing code books, and some maps/atlases (particularly road atlases and outdoor recreation maps). Almost all of these are also in our circulating collection. *Chelsea Heisler* *Local History & Genealogy Librarian* *Marshall District Library* *124 W. Green St.* *Marshall, MI 49068* *(269) 781-7821 ext.2300* On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 10:59 AM Lindsey, Brandy via Michlib-l < michlib-l@liblists.org> wrote:
I just eliminated our reference collection because it wasn't getting used. The only things I kept as reference were two sets of encyclopedias and a couple of expensive medical manuals. Everything else was weeded out or moved to circulating. I hoped that interfiling them might get them more use, but we'll see what happens.
Brandy Lindsey Learning Commons WL Western
On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 10:53 AM Amber Hughey via Michlib-l < michlib-l@liblists.org> wrote:
I'm with you, Deb! Burn the reference collection down.
We went from a full reference section to nothing. Everything is circulating, but like Deb found out, it still doesn't circ, so they're getting weeded.
On 05/08/2026 10:16 AM EDT Deb Hemmye via Michlib-l < michlib-l@liblists.org> wrote:
I would like to burn our entire reference collection for the reasons you state below. However, I have a librarian who disagrees with me and since my wishes do seem a bit extreme, we've compromised on a very modest reference collection of about 4-5 shelves. When I started four years ago the reference section took up almost an entire wall and, apparently, no one noticed when we reduced it down to less than 1/4 its former size. As a side note, many of the books we removed from our reference section we just converted to regular circulating items and - wait for it - they still don't circ. I think the days of going to the library to sit down and look something up in a heavy paper book are over, as are the days when the reference companies issued new editions of their reference books annually.
Thanks for letting me rant - to your specific questions, the libraries I've worked at back when we had reference sections, updated their books as they were published, not all at once. We maintained a complete Dewey decimal of reference books, maybe leaning a bit more heavily into areas we thought were of interest to our particular community.
Good luck!
*Deb Hemmye* Library Director Huntington Woods Public Library 26415 Scotia Road Huntington Woods, MI 48070 248-543-9720, ext. 686
Currently listening to *The Correspondent,* by Virginia Evans.
------------------------------ *From: *"Michlib" <michlib-l@liblists.org> *To: *"Michlib" <michlib-l@liblists.org> *Sent: *Friday, May 8, 2026 9:48:54 AM *Subject: *[Michlib-l] Encyclopedias/Reference Materials?
Hello Librarians,
These questions are aimed more towards the various school-public libraries, but could be applicable to everyone:
How often do you modernize your reference sections?
- Is it on a rolling basis, or an all-at-once deal?
How broad of a reference section do you maintain?
- Do Mel resources supplement your reference, or have they replaced them?
I would like to structure reference modernization into our acquisitions, but with the prevalence of the internet, we have seen declining use of the resources by our students and public. An attempt at increasing circulation was made some years ago by moving some materials into the non-fiction sections, but that has not helped to a large extent.
Thanks,
Ross
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