‘Weeding’ content, in-library and online

For the Content Marketing Institute, Jessica Coccimiglio suggests library professionals can teach content marketers about “weeding” — that is, about removing outdated content from a library’s (or website’s) collection.

“Removing content from your site doesn’t mean it’s bad,” she writes. “It may have been perfectly good when it originally went up. But times change, and so should content.”

Her comparison is apt: I regularly flag outdated materials while shelving books in the library. Similarly, I examine my past writings for continued usefulness and relevance.

Coccimiglio offers the acronym ROT for redundant, outdated or trivial content.

This is similar to the acronym MUSTIE in the CREW Method Weeding Manual, which suggests that weeding may be desirable when an item is:

• Misleading: factually inaccurate
• Ugly: worn beyond mending or rebinding
• Superceded: by new edition of a much better book on the subject
• Trivial: of no discernible literary or scientific merit
• Irrelevant: to needs and interests of the library community
• Elsewhere: the material is easily obtainable from another library

“ROT,” “MUSTIE,” whatever you want to call it — we are content professionals whether we deal with books or accumulated blog and social posts.

I agree with Coccimiglio: It’s important to “archive or delete content that hurts you more than it helps.”

Social sharing credit: Lauren Parkhill drew my attention to Coccimiglio’s post