Major Departmental Goals
Establish a practice of ongoing collection assessment, create and codify our weeding policy, prioritize areas in need of attention.
In fall 2012 Collection Services developed deselection guidelines and a workflow that was then vetted by the Library and presented to the Library Committee for approval in early 2013. Collection Services, working with Outreach Services identified three priority areas for deselection:
The Juvenile Collection [2,372 titles withdrawn in March 2013]
PZ Collection [1,309 titles withdrawn in June 2013]
Government Documents Collection [In process]
Collection Services is also working with the Music Librarian and Music Faculty to assess, replace and/or deselect our Music Library VHS collection.
All of these projects have gone well and we anticipate continuing the initiative in 2013-2014.
Deselection Guidelines
One component of collection development is deselection, the continual evaluation of resources in order to remove items that are no longer useful. Collections evolve over time to reflect changes in the university’s mission and goals, the preferences of our users, and the academic community at large; deselection ensures that a collection remains useful and accessible.
The Furman University Library engages in a continuous process of collection deselection to ensure the usefulness of our collection. Collection Services, in consultation with Outreach Services and the Library Director, will:
Identify an area of the collection to be weeded
Create a preliminary collection of candidates for deselection using the following criteria as a starting point:
Candidates for deselection will be assessed.