Weeding New Media - CREW Method

CREW stands for Continuous Review, Evaluation, and Weeding, and is a portion of the collection development process created by the Texas State Library and Archive Commission.  It's an effective process, and when properly implemented, can enhance the collection by systematically and objectively identifying items that should be replaced.

The abbreviated process is:

1. Create a strong weeding and discarding policy that is agreed upon by library administration
2. Gather usage statistics about your collection and assets
3. Set aside time to do the weeding in the work calendar
4. Go through each book on the area to be weeded, looking for items that were published at least 10 years ago or have not circulated in 3, and meet MUSTY evaluation standards 
5. Inventory current holdings
6. Check availability of discarded items with online and digital resources
7. Dispose of  weeded items, discarding them according to policy, and order replacement items if necessary
8. Use the available space to highlight low circulating retained books.

When evaluating non-book media (such as AV software) the biggest deciding factors will be based on it's condition and frequency of use.  Generally if an AV item hasn't been used in two years, it's time for it to be weeded out.

E-books can also be culled using CREW.  While the information won't suffer from the wear-and-tear of physical items, unread books still take up a large amount of data and it is much easier to let the weeds build up.  And as seen in this case study with Louisiana State Libraries, purging digital content can be much more difficult to do depending on the E-service. 

External Links
The Full CREW Method 
More articles on Weeding Theory available from OCLC