Deep in the Weeds: Faculty Participation in a Large Scale Deselection Project

In 2014, the Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton embarked on a project to simultaneously address an outdated collection and to provide more student oriented collaborative space by creating a large-scale deselection plan. The interim University Librarian believed it prudent to offer campus faculty the ability to provide input on the deselection plan and an online application was created to allow faculty to request retention of titles selected for weeding. Feedback from an initial weeding pilot program was instructive and the tool was updated for the following deselection rounds to compel faculty to justify reasons for retaining titles and deter arbitrary requests for retention. While ultimately successful in deselecting 95,074 titles, future weeding projects will focus on the most invested partners, rather than the entire campus community. This article describes Pollak Library’s weeding project and analyzes the results of three years of faculty feedback.     

Making Room for a Learning Commons Space: Lessons in Weeding a Reference Collection Through Collaboration and Planning

This article describes the process designed to systematically weed two community college library reference collections in preparation for potential funding of a learning commons space. The author explains the methodology used to help facilitate the reassessment of nearly 10,000 reference titles by librarian liaisons. The goal of the project was to consistently capture each title’s weeding status designation along with required bibliographic data while stopping short of executing the weeding itself. Details about the process and consequences of the resulting category breakdowns are described in detail. The article lists key success factors such as working with teams from different departments to help manage the day-to-day procedures. Practical suggestions are offered about the use of collaborative tools, about methods for transmitting support data to liaison librarians to enable quick decisions, about goal setting, and about establishing consistent means of data collection.     

Getting to the Core:

The Anne Arundel County Public Library developed a three phase reference project. During Phase I (12 months) a committee conducted a study of the reference holdings among the 13 branches and developed a core list of 250 reference titles for each branch. In Phase II (six months) the library explored ways to have staff learn to use these reference titles. Each branch would develop a lesson plan, questions/activities, to teach both the preparer and taker the organization and content of a reference title. A training team presented a workshop on examination of reference titles and preparation of lesson plans. Participants practiced both. In Phase III (14 months) each branch develops its own lesson plan on a subject area of the core list. After all plans are developed, one plan is sent to each staff member monthly to complete. At the end of Phase III, an evaluation mechanism will be initiated to test the transfer of learning.     

Better together: Assessing a leisure reading collection for an academic and public library partnership

UBC's Okanagan Library developed a leisure reading collection in 2006 to promote and encourage reading for pleasure on campus, an initiative now seen to be taking place in many post-secondary institutions. Over 12 years almost 800 titles were added to the collection. While this collection was used consistently by students, staff, and faculty, a new initiative prompted a re-evaluation of its purpose and future. In 2017, a partnership was developed with the Okanagan Regional Library to convert one of the Library's meeting rooms into a mini-location for the public library. This space would intentionally maintain a small collection of leisure reading titles, while also allowing public library patrons to pick up holds and return their books. As a result, the leisure reading collection needed to be reviewed for duplication with the new initiative and the applicability of keeping some content for research and teaching. This column will explore how the core weeding criteria were drafted for this collection, how they were used to make final decisions on retention for each item (even when they did not meet the formal criteria), and how the Library is moving forward with the new collaborative leisure reading initiative in an academic space.     

Weeding and Evaluating the Reference Collection:

This study examined the reference collection weeding and evaluation practices of a selected group of academic, public, and county library systems. Results revealed that only two of the fourteen libraries had written guidelines specifically for reference, and only one of these was a complete document. The most common unwritten criteria for weeding related to age and use of materials, and most libraries conducted systematic evaluation of the reference collection, primarily by means of comparisons to checklists or standard lists of recommended titles. However, most libraries did not regularly conduct formal use studies. The use of CD-ROM reference tools, which was fairly widespread and well accepted, was expected to have an increasingly significant impact on reference collection development in the future. Major findings are summarized, and a list of questions provided for further study and research.     

Classification of Periodicals

Classification of periodicals can be done for either of two reasons- to place bound periodical volumes in the stacks close to monographs on the same subject or to organize the volumes in a separate periodicals area. Either reason provides a key to locating periodicals that does not depend on the patron's ability to interpret spine titles, title changes, or changing cataloging codes. If the choice is to integrate bound periodical volumes with the monographs, the same classification system must be used. For a separate bound periodicals area, many libraries have developed schemes to organize their titles on the shelves in alphabetical order by entry. Which choice is best depends on where a library chooses to shelve its periodicals and how the library staff believes patrons approach the task of finding titles.     

Three Libraries,Three Weeding Projects: Collaborative Weeding Projects Within a Shared Print Repository

The Tri-University Group of Libraries has operated a joint print repository (the Annex) since 1996. As of March 2011, the facility is at 94% capacity. Following a shutdown and comprehensive review in 2006, the three institutions developed a Preservation of Last Print Copy Agreement. This agreement spurred the three partner institutions to undertake three specific weeding projects (monographs deduplication, weeding of science, technology, and medicine journals, and a JSTOR journals last copy project) to prolong the life of the repository. This article outlines the scope, methodologies, successes, and challenges involved with these collaborative weeding projects.     

Creating Provider-Neutral Records for E-Books

After boxes of uncataloged microforms were discovered at my library, we learned that many of the titles were available as free electronic books, so I added bibliographic records to the local catalog for the e-versions. Some bibliographic records existed in OCLC WorldCat for the electronic versions, but they were not always provider-neutral. I learned how to create the new provider-neutral record and want to share my experience. Other librarians may want to replicate my project at their institutions, weeding their microforms and supplanting those records with e-book bibliographic records, thereby providing instant online access to these resources for their patrons.     

Discovering How Information Seekers Seek:

The author observes that reference collections are often too large for librarians and users to learn them well and fully exploit them. Evidence suggests that many titles in what were designed to be lean "working" reference collections are rarely if ever consulted. Systematically-gathered use data are needed to guide selection and weeding decisions. Methods that have been employed to assess in-library materials use - including use of journals and circulating books as well as of reference works - are reviewed and their application to reference materials discussed. The author closes with concrete recommendations for carrying out reference collection use studies.     

Implementation and Evaluation of a Weeding Program

A carefully developed weeding process is an essential element in any thorough collection management effort. A successful weeding program requires detailed planning and careful development of criteria for selecting materials. Options for storage, staffing constraints, alternative methods for weeding, and preservation issues must all be considered carefully in implementing a weeding program. With careful planning that relates to the institution's goals, such a program can make a significant contribution to the effective management of any library's collection.     

中西文“合订题名”图书著录的比较研究

按照各题名之间的内在结构,中西文"合订题名"图书可划分为两种类型:一种是书中题名虽然较多,却可以提炼出主要题名的图书,另一种是通常意义上的"无总题名图书"。对于第一种情况,中西文"合订题名"图书的著录都以提炼主要题名为主要任务;对于"无总题名图书"则可依照著者数量和作品数量两个标准划分成4种类型。对"无总题名图书"的著录应遵循两条基本原则:提供丰富而有效的检索点,以充分满足用户的发现、识别与选择要求;使记录呈现内在的逻辑一致性。     

It's a Wrap (Part 1)

Abstract

Due to cuts in the binding budget, librarians in the science libraries at Washington State University were forced to consider alternative ways to preserve journals. We considered a number of important variables to select journals that would no longer be bound in the traditional manner, and selected shrinkwrapping as a preservation method for those titles.     

Weeding of Library Materials-Politics and Policies

An overview of the weeding process is presented along with a review of its nature, purpose, and proper functioning in a variety of environments. Attempts to define the various terms used synonymously for weeding give some insight into the general nature of the process. The value of weeding lies primarily in developing a quality collection by eliminating out-of-date information that is potentially misleading and, in areas such as medicine, even dangerous. Factors supporting the development of a weeding program may include redundancy in the collection, shifts in goals and emphases of the institution, physical deterioration of materials, obsolescence of materials, and the need for space. Matters such as cost, politics, availability of storage or cooperative agreements should be taken into account in determining the appropriate weeding strategy. Different potential criteria (such as use of materials) are defined. Finally, it is indicated that, while there is a cost for weeding a collection, not weeding carries a more subtle cost.     

Undergraduate Periodicals Usage

A practical method of evaluating periodical use within the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois was developed in 1980. This methodology involves limited labor and costs. No complicated computer tabulations were involved in the study, which: identified individual periodical titles and ranked them according to use; identified the status of the user; identified bound volume use by title and year; and determined the loss rate, by title, of current issues. The study also contrasted current issue use with bound volume use for each title. Using this information, those titles that will satisfy 90% of the patrons' needs were identified.     

Weed 'Em and Reap? Deselection of Political Science Books

Weeding academic library collections is widely acknowledged as a necessary and beneficial, but difficult, task. Little research has been done on how librarians approach weeding for a particular academic subject area and how they apply general weeding plans and criteria to a specific subject. This project examines the weeding practices of librarians with responsibility for managing book collections in political science and related disciplines through the use of a survey about their weeding experiences and perspectives. While survey respondents expressed similar motivations for weeding, the obstacles they encounter, and their approaches to developing weeding projects to those outlined in the literature, respondents were more confident about weeding and do it more frequently than one would expect from prior scholarship. Open text responses gave insight into how librarians apply broad and subjective weeding criteria, such as currency and relevance, to their politics-related collections.     

Digital Rights Management for a Chinese XML Text Centre

The Electronic Text Centre of the OpenUniversity of Hong Kong(OUHK)has been in full operationsince early 2001.It currently houses 7,300 electronictexts,including free electronic titles,electronic titlespurchased directly from the market,and about,1,000 locallyproduced electronic titles.The locally produced titles are notavailable in the market but require local digitization andnegotiation with publishers with regard to the right to use(RTU)them so as to meet the learning needs of the OUHKcommunity.Nearl...     

Weeding an Outdated Collection in an Automated Retrieval System

In 2008 Grand Valley State University Libraries began a large weeding project in the automated retrieval system (ARS) at its Steelcase Library. An estimated 19,000 volumes were to be removed from the ARS. A systematic weeding of the ARS had never been undertaken and it presented a number of logistical challenges. This article discusses the process that was devised for this large weeding project.     

Automated Classification to Improve the Efficiency of Weeding Library Collections

Previous studies have shown that weeding a library collection benefits patrons and increases circulation rates. However, the time required to review the collection and make weeding decisions presents a formidable obstacle. This study empirically evaluated methods for automatically classifying weeding candidates. A data set containing 80,346 items from a large-scale weeding project running from 2011 to 2014 at Wesleyan University was used to train six machine learning classifiers to predict a weeding decision of either ‘Keep’ or ‘Weed’ for each candidate. The study found statistically significant agreement (p?=?0.001) between classifier predictions and librarian judgments for all classifier types. The naive Bayes and linear support vector machine classifiers had the highest recall (fraction of items weeded by librarians that were identified by the algorithm), while the k-nearest-neighbor classifier had the highest precision (fraction of recommended candidates that librarians had chosen to weed). The variables found to be most relevant were: librarian and faculty votes for retention, item age, and the presence of copies in other libraries.     

On Being a Virtual World Librarian: Experiences in Offering Live Reference Services in a Virtual World

The reference collection holds an important place within the library. The proper maintenance of this collection through weeding is a critical yet often overlooked aspect of collection management. This article offers a case study describing a reference collection weeding project, including the development of a reference collection policy, a review of standing orders, the goals and outcomes of the review, and a discussion of the benefits of the project.     

美国卫斯理大学图书馆文献剔旧项目介绍及特点分析

[目的/意义]文献剔旧工作是图书馆优化馆藏结构、扩展馆藏空间的重要手段,借鉴国外图书馆剔旧实操中的经验与做法,有助于推动我国图书馆剔旧工作的科学开展。[方法/过程]通过梳理美国卫斯理大学图书馆官方博客及区域联盟公告信息,从项目背景、剔旧标准、成员组成、项目流程、项目呈现的特点等方面对卫斯理大学图书馆剔旧项目进行分析性介绍。[结果/结论]制订完备的读者反馈机制、引入多元力量参与、优化特藏及历史文献择选等文献剔旧措施,是卫斯理大学图书馆文献剔旧项目的特点,其可为我国高校图书馆文献剔旧工作的实践操作、框架搭建、发展方向制定等提供有益的参考。