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Hi Jennifer, et al.,

[responding to the big ARLIS list instead of just the Academic Division]

Aahhh...., "weeding." One of the worst terms ever devised for one of the most important aspects of collection maintenance. There are no weeds in the corpus. Just a few faded roses where the scent still lingers...

Since we began a systematic, title by title (in hand) selection process in June 2006 for relegating material to our off-site retrieval facility, the Art & Architecture Library at Stanford has sent:
55,977 monographic and serial volumes
10,217 auction catalogs
  1,228 "Locked Stack" volumes (are either in enclosures or "bullet proof" and go to a special category in our retrieval facility - such volumes are non-circulating and can only be retrieved to this Library or Special Collections for in-house use only)
67,422 TOTAL VOLUMES

As you so correctly indicate, context for selection is everything. So creating a sort of laundry list of considerations is actually, I think, an excellent way to provide guidance to our peers. Each of us must let our specific pressures (acquisitions per year, linear feet available, staffing time and institutional commitment to support in-depth analysis, etc.) and contexts (art school, heavy graduate art history program, museum research library, etc.), our constituencies, and so on inform our selection process.

Good luck to us. We will all be working with large physical collections for decades (my opinion). Just yesterday I flipped through a book of an emerging photographer's work. Via an e-book. Appears to be fine work. But it was a horribly dismal viewing experience. I ordered a hard copy.

All best,
Peter


On 6/11/2015 10:23 AM, Jennifer C Stutesman wrote:
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Hello,

We are a small community college library in southeastern WA state. I have been working on weeding our book collection for about a year and a half, and am almost to the “N’s” in the LCs. I would like to know what weeding policies other academic art libraries use for their collections. Up until now, I have been using the following guidelines:

 

·         Outdated or dangerously outdated items.

·         Duplicates

·         Moldy or damaged items

·         Items that have not circulated in the past five years. (By report)

·         Items that faculty advise to remove.

·         Items that do not support the existing curriculum; items that are way above the reading level / scholarly needs of the freshman or sophomore.

 

In addition, the following may be considered during the de-selection:

·         What are the top 100 circulating items? Do not weed those.

·         Any lists of books we use to help different classes; do not weed those.

·         What just looks old and funky? Can we purchase something new and fresher that supports the same subject area?

·         Are there other newer publications in the same area on the same subject?

 

The problem with this policy is that, unlike most of the rest of the collection, the art books are not really applicable to these guidelines. Even very old art books are still applicable to art studies, and art books are rarely “outdated”. The “freshness  / replacement” doesn’t really apply either, as I imagine a lot of these books are no longer available, and the art student doesn’t really care about the age of the book. That just leaves me with condition and circ stats to whittle down the area.

 

If it were up to me, I would keep them all, but I know every library, even an art school library, has to deal with putting new purchases into a finite space, so I thought I would ask what you all do.

 

Thanks for reading, please reply off list and I will compile answers for the list, if anyone else is interested.

 

--Jen Stutesman

Walla Walla Community College Library

509-527-4568

“When I talk, incidentally, it's just talk. But when I write I mean it for good.” – Ernest Hemingway

 


--
Peter P. Blank
Head Librarian
Art & Architecture Library
435 Lasuen Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305 - 2018

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artlibrary.stanford.edu
650.725.1038 Voice
650.725.0140 Fax

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