I'm not sure if this has been asked before, I did a search and didn't see any results.

My question is about weeding law books (or those spiffy Nolo books). My branch has a lot of them, but they seem to be getting outdated. I'm not sure what the proper length of time to hold onto these books is. There are a few books from 2002, some from 2004. I know the law changes quite frequently, so I don't want misinformation on the shelves. At what year would you start discarding these books and leave the rest on the shelves?

Thanks!

Rather than have a complicated checklist (discard bankruptcy and tax immediately; keep contracts and property books for five to ten years), you might want a fairly easy-to-remember rule. Toss anything older than the prior edition. So if you have the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of "How to Write A Will," consider tossing the third and fourth editions. If the book keeps getting updated, it's likely the law in that area keeps changing enough that the older books may be more confusing.

If it's any consolation, we have these discussions all the time at my law library. We want to keep some materials for "historical depth" but don't want our patrons to be confused if they grab the wrong edition.

At my library, the official standard is to weed law after 3 years. YMMV.

Is there literature about the subject (weeding law books)?

One of the problems with legal materials is that the rate of change and the impact of those changes is not constant. One might have a resource on personal bankruptcy or eviction defense that retains value for a number of years, then overnight is worthless (or worse) because the law changes. Unfortunately, like text book publishers, some legal publishers also issue updates more frequently than required knowing that certain libraries will always update. (One looseleaf publisher that I tracked for a couple of years rotated the wording of contract clauses so that every third update to the page would return to the original wording).

The best solution that I have seen for this was a library that placed a yellow and red warning sticker on any legal material for which the library did not have an update contract with the publisher or where the library opted to keep an older edition. Materials that were clearly old, but retained in the collection for some reason, were red-tagged: "For historical purposes only!"

The yellow tag, which I think was custom, read something like, "Warning--Laws change frequently and the contents of this book may not be up to date."

There are many good weeding guides out there, each covering a range of subjects. And it's usually best to read a more complete one so you can revisit your weeding in other areas as well.

Different styles of libraries have very different weeding needs. For example, some patron sets only want current information and others are looking to see how rules and information have evolved over time. I'd say it's more important to make sure a weeding guide addresses your specific patron base than that it addresses a particular subject area.

We replace our Nolo books as new editions come out. We don't keep the old ones.

Somebody knows if exist some weeding guide for law libraries?

See Weeding, Anyone? by Margaret Axtmann.

To mark books loaned with labels is not a good method? Somebody already made this successfully?