[This question brought many responses. They
fall generally into two, not surprisingly, points of
view based on local needs, demands, uses, and expectation.
Here are the early returns---]
Original posting:
from: abbottjp_at_appstate.edu
Could I see a show of hands of colleges and universities
that have discarded the _National Union Catalog_ aka Mansell,
Pre-56 Imprints? About 1000 volumes in the various parts.
Accompanying tales appreciated as well.
==1==
From: John Rutledge <jbr_at_email.unc.edu>
This answers a question other than the one you ask, but I think it's
relevant. (We've had some prior discussion about the continuing value
of "Mansell" on the German specialists list.)
To what extent does the NUC pre-'56 offer material not found in WorldCat?
I had an assistant do 10 searches from the NUC against WorldCat. Two
items of ten were NOT in WorldCat. One of them was German (1921), one
was Spanish (1912).
Our head of cataloging speculates that more than 10% of the entries in
the NUC pre-'56 will not be found in WorldCat. Cataloging still
considers it an invaluable tool.
So the continuing importance of the NUC pre-'56 seems to be validated,
no? Obviously we are not going to discard any time soon.
John Rutledge
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
==2==
URI has kept it. But we did sell the old LC/NUC sets many years ago.
William T. O'Malley E-mail: RKA101_at_uri.edu
Chair, Dept. of Technical Services
University Library Voice: (401) 874-4799
University of Rhode Island Fax: (401) 874-4608
15 Lippitt Rd.
Kingston, RI 02881
==3==
If ours wasn't discarded it's lost somewhere in storage. Only once in
the nearly nine years that I've been here has it been requested; that
was by a faculty member from the History Dept. I was able to get what
he needed from OCLC.
Shirley Horbatt
Collection Development Librarian
Kean University Library
Union, NJ
shorbatt_at_kean.edu
==4==
Check out "Mansell Revisted" in the latest issue of
American Libraries on p. 78. Unfortunately the
article is not available online.
Missy Harvey
Computer Science Librarian
Senior Librarian
Engineering & Science Library
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
==5==
We've kept it here at Wayne State University. I think that it remains
useful for those cases where you need to scan pages for an incertain
spelling of an author's name. Computers and WorldCat are wonderful for
exact matches but not so good for fuzzy information.
To give a specific example, as a professor in library and information
science, I wanted to track down the author that Marion the Librarian
in the Music Man cites in her conversation with the mayor's wife. The
verbal cues from the movie weren't good enough for me to get the exact
spelling so that I wasn't successful in WorldCat or our local online
catalog, but I found the author in about ten minutes by scanning
Mansell. Plus, I was able to use the additional information from
having the full record before me instead of just a summary screen of
authors' names.
On the other hand, these infrequent uses may not be enough to justify
keeping the set if you need the space. I would also add, however, that
the set may have absolutely no value on the used book market because I
tried several years ago, with no success, to give away a relatively
complete set.
Robert P. Holley
Professor, Library & Information Science Program
106 Kresge Library
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48202
313-577-4021 (voice) 313-577-7563 (fax)
AA3805_at_WAYNE.EDU (Internet)
==6==
From:
"Joanne Oud" <joud_at_wlu.ca>
We have pitched all but the pre-56, and as far as I know no one has
missed anything. We are keeping the pre-56 for now because the
cataloguers still occasionally use them, but are planning to discard
them in the relatively near future. They gather a lot of dust and
take up a lot of shelves.
Joanne
Joanne Oud
Head, Collection Development
Wilfrid Laurier University Library
75 University Ave W.
Waterloo, ON Canada N2L 3C5
phone 519-884-1970 ext 2073
fax 519-884-3209
joud_at_wlu.ca
==7==
From:
Mia Massicotte <miamass_at_vax2.concordia.ca>
At Concordia University Library in Montreal, we went through the
throes of discarding the Mansell from our downtown campus just last
May, due to a space crunch, and given its very very infrequent use.
It was quite expensive for us to remove this physically from our
premises, due to its size and weight; and our ILL department did not
want it to go.
However, we have a copy of Mansell at our other campus, which we will
retain. At some point if we get additional promised space downtown,
we may (or may not) relocate that copy to the downtown campus.
We disposed of Technical Services's copy of Mansell some years ago.
Mia Massicotte
***************
Mia Massicotte
Assistant Director, Collection Services
Concordia University Library
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd West, LB 331-3
Montreal, Quebec Canada H3G 1M8
Tel: (514) 848-2424 ext.7783
Fax: (514) 848-2898
miamass_at_vax2.concordia.ca
Received on Fri Apr 23 2004 - 14:41:21 EDT