State institutions in North Carolina are under rather restricted rules for selling or giving away withdrawn library materials.  Efforts to change this have not progressed as much as we would have hoped, though we’ve been talking to the State Surplus officer and also a legislator about trying to augment the rules.

In the mean time, at my institution we’ve withdrawn selective journal runs for titles for which we now have perpetual archival access.  Rather than putting them in the dumpster, we have an arrangement with the records destruction company that we also use for our records management program and they come pick up and shred the materials that are discarded.  This is a more “green” solution, though it does not give us the flexibility we’d like to share the materials if the rules were relaxed.

Some states have managed to change their discards rules – Illinois is one of them, I believe.

Better World Books will take some materials, but they have become more selective over time, at least that is the impression I’ve gotten.

Eleanor I. Cook

Assistant Director for Collections & Technical Services

Academic Library Services -- Joyner Library

East Carolina University

East Fifth Street

Greenville, NC 27858

252-328-2598

252-328-4834 fax

cooke@ecu.edu

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Larsen, Alison
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 12:49 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] What to do with withdrawn bound periodicals?

Good afternoon all,

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions regarding what they have done with pulled/withdrawn bound periodicals?  We are getting ready to pull a bunch of bound titles and I did not want to dump them in the trash if I can help it.  I have looked into a few businesses and no one wants them (all JSTOR covered titles).  Has anyone found a company/organization or solution that would avoid putting these into the garbage?  Has anyone taken the binding off and recycled the text block?  I haven’t done a large-scale withdrawal so any/all help is welcome!!

Any suggestions or experiences are much appreciated.  I thank you all in advance for your help. 

Please email me off list, thanks!

Cheers,

Ali Larsen

Serials & Web Resources Librarian

Siena College