May 2013:  The librarians are now completing a last review of the Round 3 lists now; later this month we will retain all books that have received one or more marks to ‘Keep this copy,’ and finalize the list of books to be withdrawn.

June-August, 2013:  Over the summer we will pull and process these books for withdrawal, and put them on the weeded book shelves in Olin.

July-October, 2013:  Withdrawn books will be available for faculty to take for their office or departmental collections until Homecoming weekend.

November 2, 2013:  The remaining withdrawn books will be offered in the Friends of the Wesleyan Library fall book sale.

November 4, 2013:  B-Logistics will pick up the remaining Round 3 books to be sold or recycled.

When the third round is complete, we project that we will have withdrawn approximately 38,635 volumes.  This is 21,365 volumes short of our target:

How are we planning to meet the target by spring 2014?

This summer and fall we are planning a number of projects to help us get there:

-          Review of multiple editions:  In the first three rounds, a significant number of volumes were marked ‘Keep an edition,’ but not ‘Keep this copy.’  We have reviewed these and are retaining all books for which we only have a single edition.  This summer, subject specialists will review the remaining books for which we have multiple editions to determine if any might be withdrawn.

-          Review of duplicate copies:  We did this several years ago with books for which we have more than two copies; this summer we will review books for which we have more than one copy, to determine which duplicate copies might be withdrawn.

-          Adding shelves:  On the ground floor of Olin, the government document stacks have the capacity to hold additional shelves.  This summer we will add shelves to this section and then do a major shift of government documents to free shelf space.

We hope to be able to provide an update soon on plans for moving the Art Library.  In the meantime, have a good summer everyone!

(Click on ‘Start Prezi,’ then the ‘play’ icon in the bottom, left-hand corner to play the presentation from beginning to end.)

First the bad news

Round 2

The Round 2 withdrawal lists (books with call numbers beginning with P: Languages and Literatures) are finalized, and books not marked to retain are now being withdrawn.  Once they are processed, the withdrawn books will be made available for faculty to take for their office or department collections.  Any books remaining will be offered in a book sale sometime in May.

Round 3

is underway, and the withdrawal candidate lists will be available for faculty review through March 31.  It covers all subjects not covered in the first two rounds:

H – Social sciences, including economics, sociology, social history, social theory

J – Political science and government

K – Law

L – Education

M – Music

N – Fine arts

Q – Sciences and mathematics

R – Medicine

S – Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting

T – Technology, engineering, photography, crafts

U, V – Military and naval science and organization

Z – Libraries and librarianship, information science, bibliographies

The Z class (from Z 1011 on) includes a variety of subject bibliographies that may be of interest to many who are not librarians.

After the March 31 deadline faculty review of Round 3 lists the librarians will review them one last time.  Then all the volumes with marks to ‘Keep this copy’ will be removed from the list, and the withdrawal list finalized.  The books will be pulled over the summer, offered to faculty in the early fall of 2013, and any remaining books sold in the Friends book sale in October.

Round 4

In order to meet the 60,000-volume withdrawal target, we will conduct a Round 4.

Originally, Round 4 was to be a review of withdrawal candidates that had received a single mark to ‘Keep this copy,’ to determine which might be withdrawn.  However, both faculty and librarians have said that this would negate much of the careful review they have done in the first three rounds.  There are many subject areas for which only one Wesleyan faculty member is knowledgeable, and it is essential for the integrity of the collection that their decisions be respected.  So we will retain volumes that have received one or more marks to retain; they will not be included in the Round 4 review.

What will be reviewed for Round 4 withdrawal?  We’re still in the planning stage, but here are a few ideas:

-          Bound periodical volumes for which we have stable online equivalents other than JSTOR.   (We continue to selectively withdraw bound volumes with JSTOR equivalents; this would be an expansion to other stable online journal providers.)

-          Duplicate copies of books of which we have two or more copies.

-          Books on the withdrawal candidate lists that received a mark to ‘Keep an edition,’ but not to ‘Keep this copy.’

We will begin Round 4 in the fall of 2013.

If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, please contact me at ptully@wesleyan.edu, or 860-685-3887, or any member of the Weeding Committee.

12,216 books meet these criteria, out of the 825,000 books in our circulating collections (about 1.5%).  They include books published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also many twentieth and some twenty-first century works.  Authors include Horatio Alger, Charles & Mary Lamb, Spike Milligan, Rafael Sabatini, Rabindranath Tagore, Alan Watts, John Wesley, and Émile Zola.  A wide variety of subject areas are represented, with call numbers in every Library of Congress class.  It is a fascinating mix of obscure works by little-known authors and rare editions of the classics.

Michaelle Biddle, Collections Conservator & Head of Preservation Services, and Suzy Taraba, Director of Special Collections & Archives, are reviewing the list to determine which books should be transferred to Special Collections.  Some of the books are not as rare as our catalog indicates. Several are photocopies—while they contain valuable content for scholarly use, they lack the value as an artifact that the original would have had.  Others are a different, more common edition than the catalog indicates, and we are changing these catalog records to match the books.

But many books on the list are, in fact, original and rare.  These are being transferred to Special Collections & Archives where they will be permanently retained.  (The Special Collections & Archives blog will be featuring some of these books soon, if you want to know more.)

The number of rare books we hold is a testament to the depth and range of Wesleyan’s library collections.  We take seriously, and have always taken seriously, our responsibility to support the wide range of scholarly work done by Wesleyan students and faculty.  We are also committed to preserving rare books in their original form for Wesleyan and non-Wesleyan students and scholars.

To explain, on the withdrawal candidate lists faculty can mark a book in two ways: ‘Keep this copy,’ or ‘Keep an edition.’  Any book with a mark to ‘Keep this copy’ has been retained and a code placed in the catalog record for future reference.  A mark to ‘Keep an edition’ indicates that at least one edition of a work should be kept, but not necessarily the edition on the list.

We have not pulled books marked ‘Keep an edition,’ but asked Melissa to review them to determine which of them the library holds in multiple copies/printings/editions, and, of these, which might be withdrawn while keeping one or more editions of the work.

It sounds, well, fairly simple—until you come to an author like Plato.  Specifically The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett.  Melissa found that the library holds 7 different versions of this work, including three different versions of the third edition.  Each version was published in several volumes; the library holds all the volumes of some editions and only some volumes of others.

What to keep and what to withdraw?  There is a lot to consider:

-          The 4th edition was published in 4 volumes in 1964, and all the volumes have circulated 6 or more times in the past 15 years.  None were on the withdrawal candidate list, and all will be retained.

-          The two-volume 1937 reprint of the 3rd edition, is held by 1,417 other libraries—more by far than other editions of this work.  Our two copies of v.1—the only volume we hold—have circulated a total of 15 times in the past 15 years.  The copies have also been on reserve.  We will retain these copies, and consider acquiring v. 2 as well.

-          The 1924 printing of the 3rd edition, in 5 volumes, is held by 70 libraries.  We have v. 1, 3, 4 and 5, of which v.5 has circulated once and v.4 has circulated 42 times in the past 15 years.

-          The 1892 printing of the 3rd edition, also in 5 volumes, is held by 115 libraries.  We have v. 3, 4, and 5, none of which have circulated in the last 15 years.

-          The 5-volume 2nd edition, published by Clarendon Press in 1875, is held by 134 libraries. Our copy is in compact storage in the basement of the Science Library, and has not circulated in the last 15 years.

-          The one-volume World’s Great Classics, published by The Colonial Press in 1899, is held by 147 libraries and has circulated 5 times in the last 15 years.

-          A 4-volume set published by Bigelow Brown with no publication date or edition, is held by 100 libraries.  We have v. 1, 3 and 4.  Volume 1 has not circulated; v.3 has circulated 8 times, and v. 4 has circulated 6 times in the past 15 years.

Melissa and Kendall Hobbs, liaison to the Philosophy Dept., have gone into the stacks to review all these sets, and have made decisions about what to retain and withdraw.

Wait until we get to Shakespeare …

‘Keep this copy’ v. ‘Keep an edition’:  You have two options for marking a book for retention.  ‘Keep this copy’ indicates that you want this specific edition of the book retained—with this editor, translator, introduction, commentary, etc.  ‘Keep an edition’ indicates that you want an edition of the work retained, but not necessarily this edition of the work.  In the case of a translation, it means that you want a translation of the work in this language, but not necessarily by the same translator.

In Round 1, some books were marked ‘Keep this copy,’ others ‘Keep an edition,’ and some had marks for both.  Books marked ‘Keep this copy’ have been retained.  Books marked only to ‘Keep an edition’ will be reviewed separately to determine how many editions and copies we have of a work, and which to retain in the library’s collection.

Sorting the lists:  The withdrawal candidate lists are in order alphabetically by author, and then by title.  You can re-sort the list to make it easier to review, by clicking ‘Sort by’ under the appropriate column.  Why would you do this?

A Publication Year sort allows you to review the older (or the newer) books on the list.

A CallNum (Call number) sort allows you to review the list by broad subject areas.

A Title sort allows you to review the list for specific titles.

If you have marked titles, click the ‘Submit Changes’ button before sorting or re-sorting; otherwise your marks will be lost.

Keeping track:  Some lists are fairly small and easy to review in a single session; others are quite large.  If you have not finished reviewing a list and want to go back to it, make a note to yourself where you’ve left off and how you’ve sorted it if you’ve done a re-sort.  Then click the ‘Submit Changes’ button before leaving the list.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please contact the library liaison for your department or program, or send an email to weeding@wesleyan.edu.

Here are the data on Round 1:

Our objective is to reach our target by the end of Round 3; this percentage does not quite put us on track to meet that target.  But scholarship in several of the subjects covered in Round 1—including philosophy, religion and history—is largely monograph-based.  This is not as much the case in some other disciplines, particularly those covered in Round 3.  We anticipate that a larger percentage of books in these disciplines will be approved to withdraw.

Round 2 review begins:  The withdrawal candidate lists for Round 2 are available for review by current and emeritus faculty and librarians: http://libr.wesleyan.edu/weeding/fac/fac_weeding.php#round2  Just log in using your Wesleyan user name and password.  Round 2 focuses on the Library of Congress P classification: Languages and Literatures.  Works of fiction and literature in all languages are included, as well as books on philology, linguistics, poetry, essays, drama and critical works.

The Round 2 lists will be available for faculty to review and to marks books for retention until October 31, 2012.  Librarians who are liaisons/selectors for these disciplines are reviewing and marking the lists as well.

If you have any questions or concerns about Round 2 or the weeding project, please get in touch with the liaison for your department or program, or contact me directly at ptully@wesleyan.edu; x3887.

What happens next (Round 1)

Finalizing the lists:

Any book on the lists that has gotten one or more marks from faculty to ‘Keep this copy,’ will be removed from the withdrawal list.

Any books that have circulated in the past year will be removed from the withdrawal lists.

The librarian(s) in charge of selection for each discipline will review the lists a final time, in particular those books that have been marked to ‘Keep an edition,’ to determine whether there is another copy or edition in our collection:

• If there is no other copy or edition in the library’s collections, the book will be retained.
• If there is another copy or edition, the librarian will determine which copy or copies to retain.

Processing books for withdrawal:

Once the withdrawal lists have been finalized, the books on the lists will be pulled from the shelves.  A book that is on a list but missing from the shelf (and we anticipate that there will be some of these), will have a mark put on its record and a search will be done for the book.

The books pulled will be processed for withdrawal, and their catalog records marked so they no longer appear when someone is doing a search.

We will periodically run statistical reports from the catalog on the number of books withdrawn as a result of this project, to track our progress toward the 60,000 target.

Withdrawn books:

Just before the fall semester begins, the books will be placed on the Withdrawn Book shelves.  Faculty and academic departments can take the withdrawn books for their office collections through mid-October.

Book sale and after:

In mid-October the Friends of the Wesleyan Library will hold a book sale that includes any withdrawn books that have not been taken by faculty or departments.

Any withdrawn books not sold in the book sale will be picked up by B-Logistics, a company that will sell the books if possible, sharing the proceeds with the library, or recycle the books that cannot be sold.

Rounds 2 and 3

The withdrawal candidates lists for Rounds 2 and 3 are available for faculty to review: http://libr.wesleyan.edu/weeding/fac/fac_weeding.php

• Round 2 lists (for books with call numbers beginning with P): Deadline for faculty review is October 31, 2012.
• Round 3 lists (for books with call numbers beginning H – N; and Q – Z): Deadline for faculty review is March 31, 2013.

After Round 3 is complete and the books have been processed for withdrawal, we will determine whether we have met the 60,000 volume withdrawal target.

Round 4

If we have not met the target, we will have a Round 4 in which we review books that have gotten a single mark to retain in the first three rounds.  Faculty will be invited to participate in this review if it is necessary.  No more details are worked out just now; if we need to have a Round 4 we will let everyone know.

Thank you

Many, many thanks to all of you who have participated in the Round 1 review, and to this semester’s conversation about the weeding project.  Please continue to let us know your thoughts, suggestions and concerns about the project.  You can contact your department’s library liaison, the University Librarian Pat Tully (x3887, or ptully@wesleyan.edu), or the weeding project email, weeding@wesleyan.edu.

In the past several months we have gotten many objections to the word ‘weeding,’ and many suggestions for what to call this project instead, including, but not limited to, the ones above. But the issue seems to be less with what the project is called than with what the project is.

What is the project?  The objective is to reduce the size of our collections by 60,000 volumes, to make room for new books and to move the Art Library into Olin.

Wesleyan’s libraries have 1.5 million items.  Of these, over 750,000 volumes are in the circulating collections; they are the books that check out.  We decided to focus on the circulating collections for this project, since we know how often each book has checked out since 1996.  This is not the only way books are used, of course, but it is a way to eliminate often-used books from the withdrawal candidate pool.

Criteria for withdrawal candidates:  Since it is not practicable to evaluate 750,000 books for possible withdrawal, we needed to find a way to reduce that number.

We worked with a library consulting firm, Sustainable Collection Services, to come up with a list of criteria for withdrawal candidates.  In order to be a candidate for withdrawal, a book had to meet all of these criteria:

• published before 1990,
• added to Wesleyan’s collection before 2003,
• circulated less than twice since 1996,
• held by 30 or more libraries in the United States,
• held by two or more of our Connecticut partner libraries (that is, Connecticut College, Trinity College and University of Connecticut, Storrs).

Withdrawal candidates:  The books that fit all the criteria came to about 12% of the circulating collection, or 90,000 books.  This graph shows the total number of circulating books per LC classification, with the green section of each bar indicating the books not being considered for withdrawal, and the red section indicating the withdrawal candidates.

Classification P, Languages and Literatures, is so large that it is out of scale with the other classifications.  Within the P class, 199,938 books are not candidates for withdrawal, while 31,134 are withdrawal candidates.

We will end up withdrawing about 8% of the books in the circulating collection, or 4% of our total holdings.  This is not an insignificant number.  But the withdrawn books are held in many other libraries, so they are available through interlibrary loan if needed by Wesleyan students or faculty.  And usable electronic versions of old and new books will become increasingly available in the next few decades.

Reviewing the lists:  Wesleyan’s faculty, emeritus faculty, and librarians have been invited to review the withdrawal candidate lists and indicate which books should be retained by the library.  The lists are at: http://libr.wesleyan.edu/weeding/fac/fac_weeding.php

The deadline for faculty review has been staggered into three rounds, with a fourth round if necessary:

• May 31, 2012 deadline:  Round 1 (A–G classifications)
• Oct. 31, 2012 deadline: Round 2 (P classification)
• Mar. 31, 2013 deadline: Round 3 (H-N and Q-Z classifications)
• Dec. 31, 2013 deadline: Round 4 (only if withdrawal target is not met)

Withdrawn volumes:  This summer we will begin pulling from the shelves and withdrawing Round 1 books faculty have not marked for retention.  What will happen to the books once they are withdrawn?

They will first be made available for Wesleyan faculty and departments to add to their office collections.  For Round 1 books, they will begin to be available in late summer or early fall.  The remaining books will be offered in a Friends of the Library book sale later in the fall.  Any books that do not sell in the book sale will be taken by B-Logistics, a company committed to the sustainable disposition of library materials.  They will sell the books they can, sharing the proceeds with the library. The books they cannot sell will be recycled.

The second and third rounds will proceed in a very similar way.  At the end of the third round, or the fourth round if it is necessary, we will conduct a major shift of the stacks in Olin to make room for the Art Library collections.

Space for Art in Olin:  A committee of Art and Art History faculty, with the library and students, are developing a proposal for an Art space in Olin, designed to meet the needs of students and faculty.   Once approved the space will be created before the move of the Art Library in the summer of 2014.

Questions:

Did you cost out the creation and maintenance of a facility to store these books instead of withdrawing them?  Alternatively, did you cost out the installation of additional compact shelving in the Science Library or in Olin?

No, we did not.  We decided that the cost of creating and maintaining a storage facility or additional compact shelving, for books that have gotten very little use over a long period of time, would be better spent either acquiring new resources that would get more use, and/or to create better study spaces.

Are libraries working together on state-wide or regional repositories of print books?

Yes, I attended a meeting last summer with many academic libraries in the Northeast, to explore creating a regional repository so that the complete scholarly record in monograph form is preserved in its original form.  Although there are not as yet plans to create this repository here, there is a repository in the Western U.S.  The private repositories of Harvard and Stanford preserve large parts of the scholarly record, although they are not easily accessible to scholars elsewhere.

Did you look at how other libraries have successfully conducted similar projects, so they might act as a model for the project here at Wesleyan?

Yes, we worked with the library consulting firm, Sustainable Collection Services, and they gave us advice based on their experience working with many other libraries.  Vassar College and Bard College have done similar projects in the past, and their experiences were particularly helpful as we designed this project.  In an academic library, weeding projects are always controversial–even those that are successful—because of the importance to research in maintaining the entire scholarly record.

We will withdraw the volumes of the other titles listed below and recycle them (the print versions are widely available elsewhere and there are stable online equivalents).  The 332 volumes withdrawn will count toward the withdrawal target for the project.

Thanks again for your comments and your patience!

Original March 6, 2012 post:  In addition to the monographs that meet our weeding candidate criteria, we are also considering the withdrawal of other items, including selected bound journals and sets that are also available online.  So far we have identified the following journal volumes and sets that might be weeded:

The Nation, 1866-1966 in Olin (201 volumes) - Will retain.

The Nation, 1912-1948 duplicate volumes in SciLi (36 v.) – Will withdraw.

New Republic, 1914-1975 (170 v.) – Will withdraw.

Economist (London), 1868-1976 (232 v.) – Will retain.

Hansards, 1803-1908 (420 v.) – Will retain.

Investor’s Monthly Manual, 1869-1916 (44 v.) – Will withdraw.

Bulletin of the Pan American Union, 1913-1948 (82 v.) – Will withdraw.

The Living Age, 1844-1941 (360 v.) – Will retain.

Total volumes that might be weeded: 1545

These are all available in full-text online on very stable, reliable platforms.  We are currently reviewing other journals the library holds in both bound and online versions, to determine what other volumes we might withdraw.

All the journal volumes we withdraw will count toward the 60,000-volume target for the weeding project.

We plan to withdraw these volumes later this spring.  If you have any questions, comments or concerns about our doing so, please let us know by the end of March by contacting me (Pat Tully, that is), your departmental liaison, or using the weeding project email address: weeding@wesleyan.edu.