OCLC establishes strategic partnership with Sustainable Collection Services
DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 20 January 2012—OCLC has established a strategic partnership with Sustainable Collection Services, LLC, an organization founded by the principals of R2 Consulting, that leverages...
View ArticleSUNY Potsdam posts details of their 2012 weeding project
The SUNY Potsdam libraries have posted a web page discussing the particulars of a 2012 weeding project. A team of librarians is evaluating all books held by Crumb Library that were published before...
View ArticleSUNY Potsdam library director reflects as a weeding project gets underway
Jenica Rogers, the library director at SUNY Potsdam, shares both her trepidation and conviction as a weeding project gets underway. Here is an excerpt: So if we want our users to identify, locate, and...
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Wesleyan continues weeding, continues communicating
Yesterday Wesleyan posted a round 1 wrap-up communication for their weeding project that is currently underway. In it, their library director Pat Tully outlines in detail what is happening as the...
View ArticleCBC Radio chronicles a librarian's acceptance of the need to weed
As part of a series on "Letting go of things you don't need", the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio show Definitely Not the Opera (DNTO) has produced a podcast on how a book lover and...
View ArticleALCTS Virtual Preconference: Day One
June 4th was the first day of the ALCTS Virtual Preconference Local Collections, Collective Context. The 90-minute session focused on using collections and circulation data to inform and accelerate...
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Deselection or Re-Selection
Over the course of 20 or so library deselection projects, it has become clear that the term 'deselection' can encompass a number of different goals. This begins to suggest that we need a more precise...
View ArticleEmerging Collection Benchmarks
As of today, Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) has gathered and analyzed collection data from 25 academic libraries of all sizes. Although our numbers are not yet statistically relevant, they’re...
View ArticleCollier Library Web site details the workings of a data-driven deselection...
Staff at the Collier Library at the University of North Alabama have published a deselection project Web site which provides substantial detail about how an SCS-supported project is working. An...
View ArticlePreparing Library Data for Collection Analysis
SCS clients vary in size and focus, but share one trait: they want to understand the composition and dynamics of their print book collections. Libraries work with SCS to quantify uniqueness, overlap,...
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Collection Analytics: Full-Service or Self-Service?
As a new company building decision-support tools and services for print book management, we at SCS encounter librarians at all points on the service spectrum. In an era where library space is at a...
View ArticleFerris State launches MI-SPI information site
Ferris State University in Michigan has published a LibGuide which explains its participation in the Michigan Shared Print Initiative (MI-SPI) and it's use of the MI-SPI retention lists to develop...
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Maine Shared Collection Strategy (MSCS)
We at SCS have been fortunate to work on a number of shared print projects over the past two years, first with the Michigan Shared Print Initiative (MI-SPI), then with the 6 LA Basin libraries of the...
View ArticleCornell Faculty Forum on the Future of Research Libraries
Clifford Lynch (Coalition for Networked Information), Wendy Lougee (University Librarian, University of Minnesota) and Anne Kenney (University Librarian, Cornell) describe the changing environment for...
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Collection Security & Surplus Copies
In his prescient 1992 book Redesigning Library Services: A Manifesto, Michael Buckland describes two primary functions served by local print collections. These are:Preservation: assuring the integrity...
View ArticleThe SCS Monographs Index
SCS has been supporting monographs collection analysis projects for more than two years now. During that time, we have processed more than 30 million bibliographic records, along with their associated...
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The Library De-Supply Chain
Anyone who recycles or composts on a regular basis knows that disposing of things responsibly can require more effort than acquiring them in the first place. Library collections are no different. When...
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Talking With Faculty About Library Collections (Revisited)
In the course of our work at SCS, we regularly visit campuses to talk with teaching faculty about “Rethinking Library Resources: The Role of Print Collections in a Digital Age.” I wrote about one such...
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A closer examination of 19th and early 20th century books
During the ALA conference this year we saw an interesting presentation about the Booktraces project, which focuses on capturing artifactual usage details from 19th century and early 20th century books....
View ArticlePotential weeding candidates among 19th and early 20th century books
In a previous blog post, we looked at the characteristics of 19th century and early 20th century books, those published between 1800 and 1923. The inquiry was inspired by our discussions with Professor...
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