Hello,
Thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions for weeding for remote storage.
Some have asked me to post my results to the list, so ta da, here it is!
Liv
***************
I have a small storage area from which we page particular
journal titles. The decision to put ceased periodicals (all very low
use, of course, and several that are available electronically) into
storage was pretty easy and straigtforward. Somewhat more difficult was
my decision to put some back issues of currently published periodicals
into storage. I only put issues prior to 2000 in storage, and once
again selected low use titles. We only page issues every other month or
so - less frequently than I had anticipated.
The space was already there, so I didn't have to estimate space
requirements. Instead, my choices were based on the space available to
me.
***********************
Dear Liv,
We here at LACMA moved a significant number of our serials to our storage
facility last year. The staff identified titles that were seldom used and a
check-list was created that we then discussed (but we have a small staff and
everyone does reference). Most of what is in storage are non-active serials.
For those titles that are current we kept the latest 2 years in the main
library. The most difficult part of the project was changing the locations!
*********************
The Univ. of Pa. library system opened a remote storage facility
a few years ago. The Fisher Fine Arts Library staff have, so far,
done one major weed/transfer to storage. The major decision-maker
for that process is on leave at the moment, but I can tell you:
- we tried to transfer (or, in a limited no. of cases, withdraw)
all duplicate copies of books, unless we knew (from circulation
records, reserve use, plain old experience) that there was a
clear demand for them.
- we transferred pre-1980 volumes of many journals to storage, but
we did not transfer any back volumes of the most important/heavily
used journals in any of our core fields (fine arts, architecture,
landscape architecture, city planning). The library storage
facility is willing to photocopy or scan wanted articles from storage
journals, and entire volumes can be shipped to any point in the
system for use by individuals.
- many old, folio-sized books were sent to storage. I had misgivings about
parting with some of these--not because they were used much, but because
they are old and probably hard-to-replace. The storage facility's
policy for making material available strikes me as too relaxed to be
appropriate for such material.
- a lot of material acquired pre-1968 and classed in Dewey was transferred
to storage. A few items discovered during that process were sent
instead to our rare book collection. I wish we had been able to
scrutinize
the Deweys more closely before transferring them, but then, I'm a
notorious
pack-rat! I know that the burden of examining this stuff, even briefly,
was
a heavy one for our head and assistant librarians, who also are the
principal
bibliographers for our fields.
- we didn't weed our reference and "locked case" collections,
but we'll have to do so eventually due to lack of space).
- printed volumes of major periodical indexes which have gone electronic
*were* sent to storage, rather than being discarded.
- we did offer the faculty in our major disciplines an opportunity to
provide input. As you can imagine, most who bothered to respond wanted
*their* discipline's material to be left alone. I can't say how
this sort of thing was resolved.
So far, the process seems to have been a success (though who knows what
transferred material has since disappeared or been mis-handled?). It
bought us some time, but the space is rapidly filling up again. A second,
more drastic round is coming soon.
************************
I have experienced storage facilities in all four of the libraries I have
worked in my career!
At Dartmouth College, it was one of the most drastic experiences, as so much
had to be sent. We sent back runs of journals, but didn't have a set cutoff
date for this reason. Some journals needed to have all the volumes on site.
Some journals wer fat and less important (e.g. Architectural Digest), so
there was a more recent cutoff date. Some journals are skinny and more
important, so had an earlier cutoff date. It seemed to make more sense
practically, even though it lost any consistent cutoff to remember.
In addition, we sent books to storage. At first it was some books that were
not reclassified to LC. Eventually all of these went. Finally, so as to do
only one more shift of the entire collection, we sent NK-TP and TS-Z to
storage, including all new books that arrived. That took up more space in
storage, because it was a growing collection, but it was temporary until
more space was obtained. The books did end up coming back! But having a
call number range all in storage is less bad for users than having some
selected books removed that are not browsable. But maybe you won't have to
cut that deep.
All your other questions are good, and you will think up others as you go
along. Good luck.
******************
I was involved in a massive removal-to-storage project, on an ongoing
basis, when I worked at UCLA in the 1990s. A summary of my advice would
include:
Avoid at all cost moving oversized materials of any kind to storage
(they are easily damaged in transit).
Bound journals more than 10 (possibly 15) years old are good candidates
for storage.
Journals that are no longer being published (or non-current
subscriptions) are also good candidates -- the full run can go.
(Remember that journals and subscriptions die because of lack of
interest.)
Duplicate copies are excellent candidates for storage (don't be
persuaded to discard duplicates of art books/journals because art
volumes wear out and are hard to replace)
Before discarding anything due to electronic "duplication," be very sure
that the electronic version is stable for the long haul (for example,
JSTOR). Never discard titles on the basis of their inclusion in
aggregated databases.
Yes, work on a title by title basis. Feel free to make exceptions to
your own rules, but bear in mind that its easier on patrons if some
simple rule is followed so that they can remember what is supposed to be
in storage.
Bear in mind that you may run across rare items that need to be removed
to some special location.
At UCLA -- and this applies to books, not journals -- we isolated stuff
for storage on holding shelves for a month before taking action. That
way, all the librarians had time to reconsider removal. I think that
worked out well.
Paula Gabbard may have more advice. She moderated a session on storage
strategies at an ARLIS/NA conference some years back.
***********************
Here at the University of Georgia we have a book repository off campus.
The criteria for sending journals are very close to your ideas
mentioned. In general we sent non research journals first, keeping the
last 15 years if not available electronically. If available
electronically you may decide that 3 - 5 years of back issues are enough
to keep in the stacks. For art journals I used the periodical list in
Guide to the Literature of Art History. I have kept almost every volume
of every title that appears on that list in the main stacks. Although
some other bibliographers have sent back issues of journals that are in
full text in some of our databases I have postponed doing that since the
quality of the images are not as good as in the print sources. So far
we have had enough room for that. In the future I imaging I will be
sending those too.
********************
If you have serial/journal titles that are "dead" those are good
candidates for storage.
****************
One tool which will be quite handy for information regarding indexing and
electonic
access to full text is JAKE (http://www.jake-db.org/). If you have any
questions about
JAKE, let me know... I'm happy to share what I know.
****************
We've been sending stuff to storage (ours is called the Satellite
Shelving Facility) for the last four years. There's always a tension
between wanting to send lots of stuff to make lots of room, and wanting
to keep stuff for people to use. Will you easily be able to retrieve
things from storage for patrons? That makes a big difference.
For most journals, we've got a cut off date of 5 years. We keep the
volumes from the last five years for most journals; older volumes have
been sent to storage, and every year or two we send more volumes away to
keep to that five year limit. We do also keep complete runs of some of
the more important journals. Short runs of journals that we don't get
anymore have also been sent away as well. So even if some of those
volumes were within the 5 year limit, we sent the complete set because
no new issues were coming in and eventually it all would have been over
there anyway. We have about 200 journals, and basically I and the
staff person who handles the journals just went through the list and
decided whether or not a particular title needed special attention (did
it all need to be kept, or go entirely to storage), or whether we could
just treat it with the 5 year limit.
For books, there was a whole list of criteria, and a long process of
review. I've attached the text of an email I sent to the faculty about
stuff being moved to Satellite.
It's never easy or fun to send materials to storage, but I think the
thing to be most careful of is to make sure the faculty have some input
or are forewarned about the process. They complained a lot the first
time we sent stuff away, but I think they're aware of the issue now, and
while they still don't like it (and neither do I), they're resigned to
it. We will hopefully be getting an expanded facility in the next year
or two, so that will be a big help. If you have any more questions, or
if this isn't clear, let me know.
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