We just finished a weeding project for journals today after over working nights and weekends since February. One of the reasons for this project is to reduce space for the library and for making room for the humanities center moving into the library. (We are requested to reduce at least 35%  or more of our print and microfilms holdings in order to fit our collections to the reduced space). Of course this weeding project requests us to maintain the same or better services to our library users, which means we should provide the accessibility to the same quantity of titles or even more titles. In order to fulfil this task, librarians and staff members worked so hard for the passed several months for checking and deselecting. I am glad to share our experience with the other serials librarians.

We  need to have at least three working teams. One team is to provide the holdings information about the titles, such as bind vol. microform, online availability, coverage period, etc. (We made Excel files of subject lists of titles and sent to all the departments' chairs of the university).

One team has to contact with faculty members, departments' chairs, or librarians who are in charge of the subjects. Give them the lists and ask them to select the important titles to keep. (They are the experts for their familiar titles by quality and usefulness). After we got the feedbacks we then made decisions accordingly.

The third team is to do the physical withdrawal once they are given the deselected titles, and to count the physical volumes or roles deleted and also to make sure the selected titles remains untouched in the shelves.

It sounds simple, but it took us a lot of time and energy to make it works for us. Our policy is: any online title will no longer have any physical holdings, which does not include the art journals. (We still keep most of the print volumes of art journals upon the request of the subject librarian). Any possibility to purchase the backfiles (online archives) in package will be counted as online titles. (This needs to check our print holdings against the list of the backfiles. If a backfile package consists of a large number of titles we have, and the price is reasonable, and the payments can be divided into several years, etc., we will consider subscribe it. At the same time, we have to deal with the publisher to see the purchasing possibility within our budget). For those without online coverage, the completeness of holdings, or the quality of the titles, and the holdings in different libraries near us are all elements to consider. The deselection of the titles without online equivalence is very hard.  At last, we felt so difficult to delete some old titles (or holdings) considering our university's needs, and we made a decision to send few less used titles to the other campus library.

Not all professors are happy with what we are doing. We sometimes need  to explain to them, while working with them about their selections.

At meantime, our library also considered making good use of our withdrawn titles for the other libraries. We contacted the other libraries and sent them lists of titles to let them select. Of course this resulted in more jobs for us by packing the titles for different people, for faculty, for some dept's who have rooms to host their favirout titles, for middle school libraries, and for foreign country university libraries. We feel happy for doing that because we did not just throw our long time collection into dumpster.

After finishing this project, we feel we could do better if we need to do it again. Anyhow, we fulfiled our task, more than 35% of the physical holdings are gone. And it ends that we did not reduce any important titles by their holdings, on the contrary, we will add several online backfile packages with hundreds of new tittles for our users. Now, we have to fix our OPAC during the summer....

Hope this can help you a little bit.

Tian Zhang
Head of Serials Department/General Periodicals Department
St. John's University Library
email: zhangt@stjohns.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum on behalf of Mary E Massey
Sent: Wed 5/14/2008 4:14 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Cc:
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Losing periodical space

	Hi Barbara,

	I have come to an academic library that also continues to lose space, or
	just fills up what we have. The university is growing and adding
	Masters' and now Doctoral level degrees which gives us a real challenge
	to housing materials, as well as purchasing them. An important part of
	my job is the constant weeding that we do. I am finding that we cannot
	get rid of materials, but we can change the format of them. Titles may
	be on databases that you have. Titles may also be procured on microfilm
	and fiche. Our students and faculty are recognizing our ingenuity in
	finding materials on formats that have smaller housing needs. We are
	trying to get ceased materials on the microtext, as well as replacing
	older volumes with the film format and leaving the latest 1-5 years on
	the shelves. We have also made 2" wide pamphlet boxes out of the 4" wide
	ones in order to reduce the shelving space when there are only a few
	issues in need of protection. Sometimes binders take up less space as
	well. We replaced the boxes in our Special Collection area by removing
	300 4 " boxes and using 300 of the 2" ones, creating 8 shelves of space.
	The microfilm replacement for print in all shelving areas has saved us
	close to 150 shelves. I keep doing this year after year. Between the
	binding, the box size reduction and the microfilm, we have been able to
	gain enough space to buy and house some core materials from a backruns
	dealer for a new PhD degree. We are a specialized and technical school
	that requires more and more resources as well as more new tactics. Be
	glad to work with you offline.

	Tinker Massey
	Serials Librarian
	Hunt Library
	Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
	Daytona Beach, FL
	masse36e@erau.edu
	386-226-6607

	-----Original Message-----
	From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
	[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Barbara A. Shipman
	Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 3:47 PM
	To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
	Subject: [SERIALST] Losing periodical space

	I'm currently on a committee to help in the reorganization of our
	periodicals floor.  Unfortunately, we will lose space rather than gain
	space (no surprises there).  We will lose an area that houses our
	current journals as well as a couple of ranges for our bound journals.
	The periodicals will remain on the same floor.  As far as I know,
	placing a some of the bound journals in the basement isn't a
	consideration.  The challenging part for the committee is to figure out
	how to work with the same amount of journals with less room.  I know a
	majority of you have been through the same situation in you libraries.
	I would greatly appreciate it if you could share your experiences with
	me.  I hope to get some great ideas that will help our library
	accomplish this challenging feat.

	Thank you,
	Barbara
	 Barbara A. Shipman
	 Acquisitions Department
	 Kresge Library
	 Oakland University
	 Rochester MI  48309
	 (248) 370-2482