January 14, 2015 (Wednesday)

Time: 3pm-4pm
Hours completed (ISD): 1/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 2.5/15
Accumulated on-site hours: 3.5/150

Today I spent some time working on the collection development project for Kara. This initial phase consists of looking through the OPAC (KentLINK) and making note of books that I believe could be moved to off-site storage books and replaced with books that are currently off-site. The main criteria that I was told to be aware of was books published in the last five-to-ten years that are located in off-site storage.

For books currently on campus I am using the following basic criteria to determine if they should be moved to off-site storage:

1. Do we have a newer edition of the book.
2. Multiple copies.
3. Theses over twenty-five years old with copies in Special Collection, on-site microfilm, or both.
4. Books that have free digital facsimiles available online (ex: Google Books).
5. Books more than sixty years old which are not considered central to the field. 

The books that I select will certainly have their circulation records checked to determine if the book is used often or if it falls within the research or teaching area of faculty.

Several librarians have commented that they wish that they had time to conduct a similar analysis of their own collections. The impetus of this project came from a recent large-scale weeding that was done with an algorithm. One of the complaints of this process is that newer books were sent to off-site storage, rather than staying on campus. I am certainly learning how complex and time consuming it is to develop and maintain a collection.

Below is a scan of one page of notes from the project.