Librarians are the original hoarders (but, you know, in a positive way).

But I always maintain that we’re not the Library of Congress here. We can’t hang on to every book, no matter how much we’d like to.

A while back I noticed our copy of 1955 Newbery Medal winner The Wheel on the School sitting, where it always is, on the shelf.

At a certain point, I realized that the spot on the shelf for The Wheel on the School could be better filled with something current. So that’s what we did.

My questions are:

When do you give up the Newbery ghost?

Should you?

Do you keep all Newbery winners around?

Do you have a system for letting them go? An equation, perhaps?

Are the answers to these questions different for public libraries and school libraries (I would say yes).