In addition to Peter's wonderful response, I'd add that checking the
bookplates & any inscriptions can be very informative! We've moved some
volumes to our restricted shelves because they were donated by important
early supporters of the Memorial Art Gallery, or because the books
related to visits by artists to the Gallery, or to early exhibitions....
When the University's main library invested in offsite storage, I
started a weeding program that was initially limited by publication date
(I think I looked at everything in the collection that hadn't circulated
or browsed published before 1950...), which helped to identify both
candidates for storage, for discard and for restricted shelving.
Lu Harper
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Blank [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: Responses to my weeding query
Greetings friends,
Weeding... With no detailed collection analysis performed in recent
memory, if ever, and with plans to move into a new building where stack
space will likely be diminished, not increased, we were overdue for a
top to bottom collection evaluation.
We inspect book by book, title by title, shelf after shelf. Each title
is evaluated on its own and as a component within the larger collection.
A bit of a ramble. Read on if you are contemplating a weeding project...
1) Circulation analysis -- Until recently the Art Library did not
circulate to undergrads, and circulation to grads was very limited.
Besides, as others have noted, although circulation analysis is a useful
tool, it should not be the ultimate arbiter.
2) Examining date stamps -- A high part of our circulation is to the
grad study carrels, but we do not date stamp books charged to grad
carrels. So we must generate circulation reports in order to gain a true
picture of circulation. The advantage of these circ. reports is that
they also indicate if an item was browsed. We encourage/train/beg our
patrons not to reshelve their own materials when browsing, but to place
them on designated reshelving shelves. We sweep these shelves daily and
all items gathered are given an "Item Use" in the circulation system. So
we can distinguish between charges and item uses via circ. reports.
These are Excel docs which allow the usual sorting and manipulation.
Similar to what most of you are familiar with.
3) As useful as these circ. reports are, it is difficult to judge a
title based on a few lines in an Excel sheet. You need to examine the
item "in the flesh" in order to evaluate its possible value to your
particular collection. We initially took our circ. reports into the
stacks in an effort to sweep through the shelves fairly quickly. Did not
work for us, slowed down an already slow process.
4) We found that what does work is to examine each and every book. Yes,
it takes a LOT of time. But there is no better way to evaluate a
collection than a protracted analysis of that collection. We've
discovered unique, rare, ephemeral titles that we moved to our Art
Locked Stacks collection. We've found missing books. Parallel editions
in foreign languages where we had inadvertently duplicated in English
are easier to spot. Etc. and so on.
**5) But most importantly, you are given the opportunity to perform the
type of introspective collection analysis that will help you identify
collection strengths and weaknesses, identify publication patterns over
time (I had no idea there were so many Kirchner collection catalogs, or
volumes on Italian Novecento painting), etc. and so on. You are forced
to deal with a vast amount of literature in areas that are far beyond
your comfort zone -- it is a real education for a bibliographer. (Thanks
to Lee Sorensen and the good folks at Duke for the Dictionary of Art
Historians, an invaluable resource for such an effort
[http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/index.htm]).
**6) Your guidelines for collection development and criteria for weeding
(and the assumptions upon which we base those guidelines and criteria)
are thoroughly beaten about and constantly revised in such a process.
Again, good education. Probably more than you will want.
Alex Ross and I started this exercise in June 2006 (talk about getting
an education!). Anna Fishaut and I are continuing. We are between
halfway and two thirds through a collection of about 160,000 - 170,000.
We've selected and sent 18,464 volumes to our offsite storage facility.
Are we keeping up with incoming titles? Barely. But the collection is
getting leaner and meaner. And we are getting smarter.
Best to all,
Peter Blank
-----------------------------
Peter P. Blank
Head Librarian
Art & Architecture Library
102 Cummings Art Bldg.
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2018
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Voice (650) 725-1038
FAX (650) 725-0140
Margaret Ericson wrote:
> Hello Colleagues,
>
> I've had some great responses with practical information regarding
> weeding criteria in the art library, but many, many more comments
> asking to share any information with the list.
> So if you have been waiting to chime in with some practical help,
> thoughts about the effect of digital book projects on weeding, or the
> like, or thoughts on what is unique about the art library weeding vs.
> other disciplines, bring on your wisdom! Others are looking for
> guidance as well.
>
> Here is what I've received so far, preserving the anonymity of the
> respondent.
>
> 1. ARLIS UK/Ireland Website.
>
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/pan/12529/20070825/www.arlis.org.uk/publ/st
oc.html
>
> Guidelines for Stock Disposal. c2000
>
> 2. One aspect to consider when weeding art books is the quality and
> quantity of images. If a book is low-circulating, but has a great
> deal of exemplary images, I might hold it back. We rely heavily on our
> circ statistics to make decisions on a title-by-title basis. We do
> have off-site storage here so we rarely have to do any real weeding.
> In that case, I would first try hard to get rid of any duplicate
> copies (barring any very high-circulating items - tag those as
> "reserve" or "library use only") and older editions. I might be
> willing to scrap a paper copy for digital (in an extreme situation)
> only if the images were all there and of equal or better quality - and
> if the e-version was owned by the library (not leased). Of course,
> bound journals take up a lot of room. We're moving out a lot of
> material we get via JSTOR. Not exactly weeding yet - but we have a
> program with Duke called "single copy". We each take responsibility
> for certain titles and share those titles - so only one copy sits in
> storage.
>
>
> 3. Paraphrasing one respondent who prefers to maintain anonymous: She
> warns against using circulation stats as the major critieria. Art and
> architecture students don't always check books out, they browse the
> whole shelf, or group, of books related to a single artist or a type
> of art. Older books with poor illustrations might be weeded, unless
> the text is by an influential art historian or critic. In a discipline
> which depends on visual images, the more you can keep, the better.
> Perhaps none of your (say) ten books on a major European artist have
> left the library, but they may have been
> consulted many times on site. She encourages counting in-house use
> stats on books left on tables or picked up for reshelving...this will
> help if circulation stats are the major criteria. If currently using a
> off-site storage area, don't discard until you see what is called back
> from storage, because what seems useless today has a way of being the
> ONLY thing wanted tomorrow, and you need to reinstate it.I do think
> multiple copies can be eliminated (depends on your curriculum).
>
> 4. I am constantly weeding due to lack of space. I treat art books the
> same as any other book. We do not have any ebooks and digitized book
> projects have had no effect.
>
> Considerations on whether an item is weeded or not:
> - number of circs since it was added to the collection
> - uniqueness within the collection
> - does it fill a gap in the collection
> - is it out of print or rare
> - physical condition of the item
> - is the information valid (i.e. art law, health issues)
> - do we have better books in the collection on the subject
>
> 5. I have many thoughts for you but I am sure you will be inundated
> with suggestions so I will give you one thought. If you find a good
> place to send the books you choose to deaccession, you will feel
better.
> We donate our books to the Prison Library Reading Program in ___. You
> might have something like that in Maine but we feel ok about
> deaccessioning books when we know that they go to places where people
> have nothing and get no funding for books.
>
> 6. I am constantly weeding & de-accessioning as our space is not
getting
> bigger any time soon but we are still adding books & exhibition
> catalogs. As far as having a defined policy, mine is to stick very
> strictly to the mission of the School - which in my case is easy as
it's
> full title is"_______ School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture
> Anything that doesn't fit into the remit is at risk of being pulled.
> Despite some people thinking that art books shouldn't be weeded
because
> the information doesn't become obsolete (I heard that said in a
> collection development class), practically I remove things where the
> majority of images are b&w or in bad color reproduction, unless it is
> the only example we have of an artist's work. I also remove items that
> are out of remit, keeping on a few (Goya or Durer etchings, for
example)
> that serve to compliment the rest of the artist's oeuvre. This of
course
> means pretty much going title by title. As we have a non-circulating
> collection, there's no reports I can pull to see what is being taken
> out. However, by keeping an eye on what's used, and what we have to
> represent certain aspects of art, I can make a judgment call as to
what
> to keep in the stacks and what gets pulled. A lot depends on the size
of
> your collection as to the practicalities of title by title weeding. Is
> it at all possible to gain on-site storage somewhere for items that do
> not necessarily need to be in the stacks but should be somewhat
> accessible? That might work to help in the decision-making process of
> what goes & what stays. I hope this helps. Good luck!
>
>
>
> Have a great day!
>
> Margaret Ericson, Art and Music Librarian, Colby College Libraries
>
> __________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________
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For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
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Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
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