[Original posting on this topic appeared in COLLDV-L no. 1767 and is
reproduced below; the response follows it.]
From: Christine Elizabeth Dunphy <cedunphy_at_is2.dal.ca>
I have been given the task of weeding the computer science collection of a
relatively large Canadian academic library. If guidelines for the weeding
of such a collection have been drawn up somewhere else, I would very much
like to know of them. The decisions I will eventually make will be
reviewed by a specialist, but space is valuable here. The garbage (ie.
books on programming languages which are not used anymore.) must go. If
anyone has any advice, it would be very much appreciated.
Christine Dunphy
cedunphy_at_is2.dal.ca
===========================================================================
(1) From: cookdc_at_stauffer.queensu.ca
This is an interesting question which has bothered me. We have not made a
special effort to keep a retrospective collection on computing because our
collection was always small and we have been assuming that the large
institutions, like U of T or CISTI, would retain the permanent record. If
we had felt that our historical collection was particularly strong, we would
probably have consulted those institutions to make sure that historians
would have the retrospective materials they might need.
However, our major weeding of engineering and science books occurs this
summer, and the historians have been expressing concern that we protect
their interests, so we would be interested to know what other have done and
why.
Received on Fri Jul 17 1998 - 08:56:57 EDT