Meet Cardie: The Weeding Chat(Cat)Bot

Librarianship can be a lonely profession. We’re often the only ones in the building--sometimes even district-wide. And I know there are a lot of you out there who wish they had someone to bounce ideas off of when facing tricky decisions:

• Which books does the collection need most?
• Where should I allocate my meager budget?
• How can I better organize and showcase the collection?

A few posts ago, I shared the story of my two-year weeding project across three school libraries. It was a massive undertaking, but so worth the time and effort. That said, my aide and I often found ourselves stuck in decision limbo:

• Should we keep this classic, even though it hasn’t circulated in four years?
• What about this falling-apart LEGO Star Wars book that the kids love and still check out all the time?
• Is it time to ditch this one with a painfully dated cover, even if the story still holds up?

I recently completed a graduate course as part of my MA in Instructional Design and Technology. For my final project in Online Course Management and Delivery, I had the option to choose from three exciting projects designed to improve the online learning experience:

1. Create a digital badge program
2. Create a liquid syllabus
3. Create a custom GPT

Naturally, I wanted to develop something practical for librarians--something I could share here. That’s when it hit me: a weeding chatbot!

🐾 Meet Cardie!

Enter Cardie: your weeding wingwoman. Or should I say, wingcat?

Affectionately named after a librarian's favorite item of clothing, Cardie is here to help you make confident weeding decisions even if you're the only librarian in the building. She's also the cute librarian tabby in the Cardigans, Cats, and Call Numbers logo!

How to use Cardie:

1. Make an account at Poe.com.
2. Click on this link to access Cardie.
3. Ask her anything weeding-related and she’ll give you research-based answers to your tricky questions.

How Cardie works:

Cardie uses the MUSTIE method.

Misleading • Ugly • Superseded • Trivial • Irrelevant • Elsewhere

She gives clear verdicts—KEEP or WEED—with brief explanations to back them up. If she needs more info, she’ll ask smart follow-up questions (e.g., “What’s the publication date?” or “Is it circulating regularly?”).

Aggression modes

Cardie offers three “aggression modes” when applying MUSTIE:

1. Gentle: Applies MUSTIE with care—books aren’t weeded just because one criterion applies.
2. Standard (Default): Uses balanced reasoning, follows MUSTIE as written.
3. Vicious: Ruthless and unsentimental. If it qualifies, it goes.

If no mode is mentioned in your prompt, she defaults to Standard.

What else can Cardie do?

• Suggest replacements
• Recommend diverse, current, or award-winning titles
• Offer sample language for pushback
• Occasionally drop a Cardie’s Claw-ver Tip (e.g., “If Pluto’s still a planet, it’s time to go!”)
• Add cat puns and library humor to her responses

A few quirks to know

Cardie's great, but she's not perfect. In her trials and development, I came across some snags and imperfections. 

• She sometimes writes too much. Ain't nobody got time for that.
• Occasionally, she uses placeholder language like [doc_1, doc_4] instead of referencing her uploaded knowledge sources by name.
• Once in a while, she waffles instead of giving a clear KEEP or WEED decision.
• Her replacement recs aren’t always the most current.

Why does this happen? My brilliant professor, Dr. Danielle Mirliss, explained it to me best. "Large language models aim to please and can be sycophantic."

Please remember--Cardie isn’t the end-all, be-all of your weeding decisions, but she is a helpful lil tool. Sometimes, she might need a hand double-checking her work!

Good answer, good answer!

Here's a good example of how to use Cardie. She generated a definitive answer, kept her response short, and even threw in a Claw-ver Tip. Woo!

And another. I love how Cardie’s response not only replied to how sensitively handle this situation, but she also suggested finding a more historically accurate portrayal and a more inclusive depiction of early American history. Yay Cardie!

Aaaand another. I was hoping she’d say this. She doesn't always stick to the length rule, and, weirdly, she said [doc_1, doc_4] instead of listing the sources I uploaded to her Knowledge 
Base.

Example of Cardie's Standard "aggression mode" in action. I looove this answer.

...and a few that made me go, "Hmm."

Like I said--she’s not perfect. But the good news? Cardie has the potential to get better over time as large language models continue to improve. In the meantime, here are a few of her less-than-stellar moments:

I was sure she’d recommend weeding these. There are plenty of other options out there, and we don’t need to hang on to works by authors who’ve fallen from grace. But Cardie got a little wishy-washy and long-winded here, acting more like a coach than giving a clear verdict. Sometimes Cardie wants to be liked more than she wants to be firm!

Her answer here is a bit too long (Cardie, we talked about the 1-2 paragraph rule...), and the book suggestion she offered is a bit outdated for the topic.

I feel her response is still too long, and why is she recommending we keep a 30-year-old computer book?! Gotta say, I don’t love this answer.

Final thoughts

Custom GPTs like Cardie are emerging as powerful tools across many fields, offering tailored support and specific functions defined by their creators. In education, their usage is becoming increasingly prevalent in supporting learners in diverse and creative ways. They can answer questions and help people in real time.

Cardie isn’t a flawless weeding oracle, but she’s a dang good start. Whether you're knee-deep in a massive weeding project or just second-guessing a few shelf-dwellers, Cardie’s here to help.

So go ahead! Ask her your questions. She's ready to help you make space for the books that truly deserve to be in your collection...and offer some tactful comebacks to explain your weeding choices with confidence and ease.

Happy weeding,

Cardigans, Cats, and Call Numbers 🐱📚