[Original posting on this topic appeared in COLLDV-L no. 1862 and was
reproduced with Responses #1-3 in COLLDV-L no. 1873]
(4) From: Mitch Turitz <turitz_at_sfsu.edu>
In my opinion you need to see if the books in question have circulated,
and if so, how recently.
Additionally, SFSU is currently discussing options for putting old bound
periodicals into remote storage. We are thinking of first doing this with
pre-1970 titles which are available via JSTOR (which we now subscribe to),
so that the full-text of the old titles are available online. The biggest
problems that we think may occur are from: 1.) faculty who may think their
titles are too heavily used to be put into storage; and, 2.) Students who
want to print out the entire articles/journals for their use (we only have
limited number of printers available in the library).
=========================================================================
(5) From: "William Buchanan" <wbuchanan_at_erols.com>
Here is our response to the Weedlist postings cited in no.1873 dated
November 5, 1998.
Thanks to the many responses we received from the original Colldv-l
listing [COLLDV-L no. 1843], we have already processed millions of
bibliographic records which academic libraries sent us to match against the
Weedlist
database. So far, we have generated enough "hits" to reclaim an
average of 1,670 linear feet of shelfspace for each participating
library. (That reclaimed space would of course be reduced a bit in
individual libraries by the number of titles which librarians and
teaching-faculty may decide to keep on their shelves as a result of
our retention-review process).
While we were delighted with the enthusiastic response to our
matching offer, it appears from the three messages posted under
"Weedlist questioned" (Colldv-l no. 1873) that our earlier
communications may have given a few people the wrong
impression of the program.
Our intention was to introduce the Weedlist approach as a unique
addition to traditional methods -- not as a replacement for them.
Although we have not suggested that Weedlist is the only de-selection
technique, its real benefit should be kept in mind: it can help reclaim
thousands of square feet of storage space at one time while dealing
with only 3% to 7% of the volumes in a collection -- a high return on a
small investment of professional staff time.
Moreover, as Weedlist is the only system that provides a rationale for
de-selecting specific titles on the basis of declining comparative value,
it can identify many candidates for discard or transfer to secondary
storage that would not be uncovered by traditional techniques.
Also, please keep in mind that it is just the first of a family of new
collection-development products and services that are under
development or consideration at Library Dynamics. In this connection,
we will welcome suggestions from Nancy Carriar and others as to new
or old techniques we might utilize to help libraries identify additional
de-selection candidates in the vast universe of non-BCL titles.
Bill Buchanan
Library Dynamics Company
Received on Fri Nov 13 1998 - 09:43:09 EST