I would be interested in knowing what criteria/strategies were used.
Deborah Van Petten
Reference Librarian\Reference Collection Coordinator
Affordable Learning Georgia Library Coordinator for VSU
Office Phone: (229) 245-3749
Reference Desk Phone: (229) 333-7149
Email: dvanpett_at_valdosta.edu<mailto:dvanpett_at_valdosta.edu>
________________________________
From: colldv-request_at_lists.ala.org <colldv-request_at_lists.ala.org> on behalf of Michael Hohner <m.hohner_at_uwinnipeg.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, June 5, 2018 11:58:51 AM
To: Erin Gallagher; colldv_at_lists.ala.org
Subject: RE: [ALCTS-colldv] Strategies for weeding print reference collections
Hello Erin,
We reviewed our Reference Collection last summer. We’re a primarily undergraduate institution with one main/central library and about 500,000 items in our main collection.
We had reduced our Reference Collection by about 50% more than 8 years ago. This was to make room for a new Library Instruction Lab and was more of a top-down mandate that was met with strong resistance or much reluctance at the very least. On the positive side, we started doing an internal use count on items left in the area, so we have some context for use of the collection.
Last Summer while a new staff member was doing inventory of the section, he was in complete amazement of much of the material that we had. Another staff member of our Reference team who had been in the library for many years, started getting involved as we were sharing stories of interactions we’d had with students and the challenges of getting them to use the collection. We started making piles of material under different categories.
We had directories that were much more than 5 years old and weren’t see to hold much value any longer. We had other very dated material such as cyclopdias from the 1800’s. We also had purchased new editions of encyclopedias online, but still retained the previous edition in print (even though there was often a 10 year gap and even one with a 50 year gap between editions). We also had retained many previous editions of dictionaries, etc. The ALA Guide to Reference Books recommends this for Granger’s index to poetry after certain editions, which were no longer cumulative, but for other dictionaries like Brewer's dictionary of phrase and fables, the faculty member who specializes in fables couldn’t see why we had all the previous editions we had (nor a folklore encyclopedia set we had that was in German). We had other items that seemed highly specialized – like a book about the history of astrolabes including how to build them. I think we overwhelmed students with an exhaustive collection of dictionaries in certain subjects having at least 10 Physics dictionaries – so we kept the newest and more authoritative (Cambridge) and deleted or transitioned the older and perhaps less authoritative ones (e.g. Penguin). Dictionaries of particular authors or authors works were seen as too specialized for the collection, so we moved them to the general collection if they were seen as still having value. For items that would be move to the general collection and used by a class, we recommended that faculty be mindful and just place them on reserve. We didn’t want the reference collection to be as much of a permanent reserve collection as it had become. We also removed concordances. A good portion were move to the main stacks if they had seen any use or were in good condition, but many of the older ones have been digitized and are available in Archive.org (and seems like that would be much easier for anyone using concordances to access, especially with various electronic formats and key word searching). We also had many yearbooks and annuals that we were to retain the last 3 years in Reference, but they had been cancelled many years ago, so although the most current we had they needed to be removed from Reference at the very least. We still need to remove our bibliographies, but have many very old ones that need to be removed or possibly transitioned, but we also want to look at moving some to other subject classifications rather than just placing under Z’s.
There’s certainly a lot of nuance but the piles/categories helped, and you really need to coordinate with as many as possible, especially with deleting or even transitioning to the main stacks any multivolume sets or such purposed retentions of previous editions. Although we don’t have a lot of extra space in our general collection/main stacks, we didn’t want to lose anything that could still prove useful, so we were willing to transition over deleting, but also would check to see how widely held and locally held many of the items were. The main objective in all this was to make the collection more approachable and accessible. We reduced the shelving capacity by 30% removing a whole bunch of ends of rows that ran to the wall (a dimly lit area with tall reference stacks) and placed study tables in the area we opened up so students could use the reference items in closer proximity than ever before. From what we can see from the Reference shelving return cart that regularly piles up with materials students are using and usage counts, the collection is being used much more frequently/heavily than ever before.
Best,
Michael
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Michael Hohner, MLIS
Head of Collections
Library
P 204.786.9812
515 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
R3B 2E9
uwinnipeg.ca<http://uwinnipeg.ca/>
[http://uwinnipeg.ca/branding/images/uw-esig-logo.png]
From: colldv-request_at_lists.ala.org [mailto:colldv-request_at_lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Erin Gallagher
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2018 2:14 PM
To: colldv_at_lists.ala.org
Subject: [ALCTS-colldv] Strategies for weeding print reference collections
Hello everyone,
We are preparing to weed our print reference collection this summer. The collection is currently shelved separately from the main stacks and only a handful of titles are allowed to be checked out and used outside the library.
We have weeding criteria we drafted in 2014 but would like to update these criteria. For other libraries who weed print reference collections, what criteria do you use for weeding? Are there any other strategies or suggestions that have worked for you?
I'll be happy to synthesize our responses and share them.
Thank you in advance.
Erin
Erin Gallagher
Director of Collection Services
Reed College Library
(503) 777-7552
gallaghere_at_reed.edu<mailto:gallaghere_at_reed.edu>
Received on Wed Jun 06 2018 - 12:33:02 EDT
