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"I appreciate your willingness to offer this vital information in a 90-minute session!

Some comments from attendees:

-An outstanding presentation. It was well worth my time.

-It was really fantastic. I came away with some good ideas and the beginnings of a plan."

Tracy Rochow Byerly
Executive Director, MLNC

 

Is more remote storage the answer?

 

What should your collection footprint be?

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Seminars on Sustainable Print Collections

About the Seminars

In developing the SCS value proposition, the company's founders assembled a vast amount of information about the use and costs of print collections. This background material has proved very useful in thinking through the benefits and risks of managing print journal and monograph collections more actively--and in balancing deselection with each library's responsibility to the "collective collection" and to future users. To improve our understanding of these issues and to engage the library community in this thinking, we have prepared and delivered several presentations on these topics.

These presentations have taken different forms and have been tailored to different audiences. At the Charleston Library Conference in November 2008, Rick Lugg and Matt Barnes presented a half-day preconference on Weeding, Offsite Storage, and Sustainable Collection Development: Library Space and Collections 30 Years after the Kent Study. Rick Lugg and Ruth Fischer presented an updated version of this session in November 2009.

The question of monographs use was tackled more directly in a 1-hour presentation entitled Expert Selection and Monograph Use: A Brief History (and a Brief Future?), delivered at "Exploring Acquisitions 2009" in Oxford and at the CIC's annual conference, also in 2009. In May 2010, Grand Valley State University invited Rick Lugg to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to present a half-day session on Legacy Print Collections in a Digital World, a session primarily intended for library selectors. Finally, in August 2010, at the request of Augustana College, Rick developed another 1-hour session aimed at teaching faculty and presented the case for deselection to a group of 150 at the Augustana Faculty Retreat. This session was called Rethinking Library Resources: Legacy Print Collections in a Digital World.

SCS offers seminars and presentations based around these themes. Our standard presentations are listed below, but we are always willing to tailor sessions to a specific audience. Our content is continually evolving, as we incorporate new information and perspectives--and especially as we work with library after library to analyze print activity and to help shape withdrawal and retention candidate lists. 

Rethinking Library Resources: Sustainable Print Collections in a Digital Age (a half-day seminar)

Library shelves are increasingly full, and more books are being published than ever. Yet surprisingly few are being used. The Kent study, begun in 1969 at the University of Pittsburgh, found that 40% of monographs in academic collections never circulate. Recent data suggest that percentage is even higher today, as users flock to electronic content. Meanwhile, library administrators seek to expand space for group study, information commons, writing centers, and cafes. Much of the available space is currently occupied by low-use print collections, stored and maintained at an estimated annual cost of $4.26 per volume. For all these reasons, print collections are facing scrutiny.

Many libraries have already begun to store or withdraw journal backfiles represented in JSTOR, to weed print reference collections, to share last-copy responsibilities, and to rethink tangible Government Documents. For print monographs, other factors must be considered, such as the extent of holdings in other libraries, regional commitment to shared print, and the availability of secure full-text digital surrogates.

SCS has distilled its research from the library literature and its monitoring of current activity into a dynamic 2-3 hour presentation on "Rethinking Library Resources." This seminar is available for individual libraries and consortia, and can be adapted for audiences of librarians, administrators, and faculty. The session consists of three segments:

The Changing Value of Local Print Collections

  • Changes in library services and collections
  • Changes in user preferences
  • Use of print collections
  • Shelving and floor space
  • Lifecycle costs

Alternatives to Local Print Collections

  • Collection security and content preservation
  • The "collective colletion"
  • Hathi Trust and secure digital collections
  • Shared print archives initiatives
  • Disclosure of retention commitments

Managing Down Local Collections Responsibly

  • Making the case and managing communication
  • Responsible deselection and collection integrity
  • Efficient deselection: metadata and workflows
  • Disposition options
  • Achieving sustainable collections

SCS will present and discuss these topics from the vantage points of collection development, technical services, library administrators, students, and teaching faculty.

Data-Driven Deselection for Monographs: Achieving a Sustainable Print Collection

This is designed as a more focused and practically-oriented introduction to monographs deselection. Presentation time is 60-75 minutes, typically followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. The presentation includes a detailed look at several library case studies in which low-circulation titles are identified, compared to holdings in other libraries, to authoritative title lists, and to print and digital archives. Particular attention is paid to available tools for deselectors and administrators, such as the GIST Gifts & Deselection Manager (GDM) and SCS's own decision-support system for deselection.

This is very much a how-to session for libraries or consortia seeking to inform deselection decisions with data from outside sources as well as circulation and in-house use. SCS will present anonymized data sets and results from several libraries, and will highlight portions of the analytical process, such as:

  • Extract of bibliographic and item data from local systems
  • Data normalization procedures
  • Selection of comparator targets
  • Title protection rules
  • Interacting with preliminary results
  • Withdrawal candidate lists and preservation candidate lists
  • Producing easy-to-use picklists
  • Batch maintenance of bibliographic, item, and holdings records

The session will conclude with some thoughts about project management, scoping, getting started, and getting finished.