UPEI Collections Assessment and Weeding Melissa Belvadi CAUL May 2018
Raw data available Evergreen: raw sql queries on entire catalogue data - MARC, circulation, item/location info Ebooks included in catalogue but hard to match ISBNs, etc. Circulation data in system back to June 2008; due date stickers before that No money for GreenGlass. Goals: Shelf space! Remove embarrassingly out-of-date books:
Weeding targets Different rounds for different purposes Low hanging fruit: Duplicate copies with little recent use Older editions with little recent use More painful but necessary: Older books with no recent use
Sample spreadsheet raw data Multiple editions: Circulation activity, June 2008+: This report doubles as a shelf list for librarians to manually skim for out-of-date content titles
Manual selection versus heuristics Different approaches for different weeding targets: Manual for out-of-date content Manual for multiple editions Heuristics for large scale weeding based on age/circ activity Difficult decision: when is librarian discretion necessary versus cost of librarian time?
Example of heuristics