December Days 19 - The Algorithm

[silveradept]

[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]

collection_name = gets.chomp

books = Array.new

Book.where(collection: collection_name).find_each do |book|
books.push
end


weed_candidates = Array.new

books.each do |book|

if book.type == fiction && book.publication_date <= 2.years_ago && (book.circ_ytd < 4 || book.circ_lastyear < 4), weed_candidates.push
end

if book.type == nonfiction && book.publication_date <= 5.years_ago && (book.circ_ytd < 4 || book.circ_lastyear < 4 || (book.circ_lifetime / (Time.now.year - book.publication_date.year)) < 4),
weed_candidates.push
end

end

After that, it requires a certain amount of human intervention, looking at condition of the material, whether it has friends in a series that are going well, whether it's an award-winner (which doesn't necessarily save it from its fate) and so forth. There's also some looking on things that escape this algorithm to catch the things that are circulating but in bad condition or that have circulated sufficiently that they may need replacement copies. But that's the basic way that I handle making decisions about which books are to be considered for dismissal based on their circulation. Other material types have different baselines, but the idea is the same.

A thing we always have to remember is that the computer can make suggestions, but the humans always have the final day on whether something stays or goes. Always.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Humans are vital here.

[silveradept]

Always and forever.

[vass]

In the bad old days before Abe Books, when I used to haunt my library systems (all four of them that I had memberships with) to make sure their book sales didn't dispose of anything out of print and unavailable elsewhere and much loved, and buy the victim if they did. My definition of "a good weed" was one where there was not only nothing I wanted on the sale trolley, but nothing I could imagine anyone else wanting either.

Diane Carey's Dreadnought and Battlestations. Diane Duane's The Door Into Sunset, back when I'd read that but not the first two books and had no idea where to find them. (Eventually I picked them up at a new book store where they were apparently being remaindered.) Kendall Hailey's The Day I Became An Autodidact.

I'm so glad it isn't the 90s any more, aren't you?

[silveradept]

I am, yes, although I do miss the proliferation of bookstores that the 90s had.