Of course, your browsables and the stuff with da pretty pictures needs to be kept on site.
 
If you do not have current use statistics, you have to look at what your electronic coverage is.  Another way is to identify the disciplines in your institution for which the constituency for research materials is small (limited to faculty) and has other avenues.  I think if you went hunting for truffles you might identify computer science literature first and then literature in mathematics, and then physics, and then esoteric foreign languages, but that depends on your departments.  Different disciplines vary also in how perishable research is.  Engineering and science literature tends to age much more rapidly than that in mathematics or social research or the humanities.  You might also ask about the relative importance of serial publication to a particular discipline.  All things being equal, I would be much more loath to put economics journals into storage than I would history or philosophy journals.
 
None of the foregoing can be readily quantified, so you might maintain a policy of selectively recalling material that has been requested.
 
IW

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Diane Westerfield <Diane.Westerfield@coloradocollege.edu> wrote:

Hi,

 

Our library has the opportunity to place some materials in long-term storage in PASCAL (see http://pascal.ucdenver.edu/).  The facility has staff who can respond to interlibrary loan requests, so our patrons would still be able to get articles.  PASCAL is climate-controlled, and the cost to store materials there is reasonable.

 

Since our bound periodical section is filling up, and we need to carve out more study space, it seems like a good idea to put some journal runs in PASCAL.  We do conduct JSTOR withdrawal projects every other year, but JSTOR withdrawals are no longer keeping up with our space demands.

 

Has anybody conducted a project to identify print journal titles for storage?  Any tips to share?  We don’t maintain usage statistics for print periodicals, so we can’t use that metric.

 

Of course, no art titles will be sent into storage.  I am thinking we’ll keep popular magazines that students are often assigned to look at quickly (Life, Newsweek, Time), the old periodicals that are used by history classes (Harper’s Weekly), and particularly important journals (Nature, Economist). As to electronic coverage, I’m thinking this could be a way to move some aggregator-covered titles that we otherwise would have to retain.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

Tutt Library, Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

(719) 389-6661

(719) 389-6082 (fax)

 

 

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I. Woodward
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Colgate University Libraries
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