1. Emergency Weeding! Or, Just-In-Time Collection Development

2. Emergency #1 The renovation

3. No time to lose Reduce Reference footprint space by 75% July - December 2013 ➢ Identify materials to be removed ➢ Update, replace, improve materials ➢ Relocate select items ➢ Remove shelving, shift

4. Sources for weeding planning ➢ ALA’s Fact Sheet 15 - “Weeding Library Collections: A Selected Annotated Bibliography for Library Collection Evaluation” http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet15 ➢ CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries, by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, Texas https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/ld/pubs/crew/crewmethod08.pdf ➢ Usage-Based Collection Evaluation with a Curricular Focus Karen C. Kohn, College & Research Libraries, January 2013

5. “Best Practices” cherry-picking ➢ Identify scope of the project ○Make a “first-pass” through Reference ○Focus on the obvious ○In the first pass, skip materials requiring complex decisions ➢ Keep records ○Spreadsheet from 2012 ILS migration ○Printed title-lists ➢ Consult people & published sources when necessary ○Reviews - Choice Online, Library Journal, etc. ○Cagily-chosen faculty members ○Librarian colleagues

6. First-pass through the Reference collection ➢ Shelf-read ○Start in “easy” subject areas (ones you know well, or those quickly-outdated); examples: sciences, health, foreign languages, politics, and law ○Scan the shelf for outdated dictionaries & encyclopedias, lab manuals, and standards ○Identify duplicates, one-off copies of monographic serials, superseded editions ➢ Note discards in your records ➢ Dispose of materials

7. Some subjects that usually don’t belong on the Free shelves: ❖ Medicine ❖ Lab sciences ❖ Standards ❖ Law ❖ Education ❖ Directories The “Free Books” are a hit

8. Reference collection - weeding section by section

10. Reference Snapshot Before weeding:~9,300 items (as of June 2013) After weeding:~4,500 items (as of Oct 2014)

11. Emergency #2 The domino effect

12. Making room in the general collection Cramped quarters - everybody shift ➢ Re-shelving bottlenecks ➢ Domino effect - can’t shelve without shifting; can’t shift without weeding ➢ Math & Computer Science pilot project ➢ Identify & prioritize crowded sections - Biology, History, Political Science, Psychology

13. Applying what we learned Math & Computer Science (and beyond) ➢ Use the Mathematics Association of America “Basic Library List” ○Keep titles rated “BLL*” and above ○Remove textbooks ○Remove pedagogical texts ➢ Apply shelf-reading and scanning ○Remove earlier editions ○Remove old manuals for software & hardware ○Remove “consumer” oriented, popular texts ➢ Generate title lists to identify multiple editions & duplicates ➢ “Drive-by” weeding

14. Sample generated title list HB171.G4 1938Progress and poverty, an inquiry into the cause of HB171.G4 1954Progress and poverty; an inquiry into the cause of HB171.5.H83 1978Economics : an introduction to traditional HB171.5.H83 1990Economics : an introduction to traditional HB199.R66The stages of economic growth, HB199.R66 1971The stages of economic growth; HB199.R66 1991The stages of economic growth :

15. A few surprises

16. Selection judgment lapses - Anthropology & Psychology

17. Pedagogical manuals

18. Sexist vocational guidance & gender analysis “...of all the works written by these numerous [female] composers, hardly one is known on the lyric stage today. And why? The most palpable answer, and the only one that is fairly indisputable, is that having had equal advantages with men, they have failed as creators.” George Upton, Woman in Music, p. 22 (1886) [In the interview] If he asks you if you plan to get married, there’s no need to be apologetic in admitting that you’d like someday to be a wife… Many executives are actually wary of ‘career’ types, on the grounds that they often tend to be dominating.” Patricia Ingolsby, The Executive Secretary, p. 297 (1969)

19. “The Future”

20. Irrelevant AND inappropriate

21. Emergency #3 The leaks

22. When the rains came - working around leaks

26. What we’ve learned 1.Factors beyond the library’s control may drive the weeding process 2.“Drive-by” and batch weeding can speed things up 3.Even when weeding on deadline, it’s important (and possible) to make thoughtful decisions

27. Questions?

28. Thank you! Nebraska Wesleyan University Cochrane-Woods Library Barbara Cornelius, Head of Technology and Archives bac@nebrwesleyan.edu Margaret Emons, University Librarian memons@nebrwesleyan.edu Martha Tanner, Head of Library Instruction and Reference mtanner@nebrwesleyan.edu