We literally just did this a week ago.  We ended up pulling nearly 20,000 periodical volumes.  We did not look into selling these nor in donating them. We used a local paper pulping company that recycled the contents after removing the covers.  The company agreed to pick the volumes up in pallet-sized boxes at no charge so the project had no direct costs for us.

We pulled all the volumes in a span of a couple of weeks.  Since the pulping company was local, they could pick up the pallets on the same day or the day after we called them.  We had about ten pallet-sized plastic bins (some in public areas, unfortunately) that the students filled up. The company would pick up the full bins and replace them with empty ones. It was actually a relatively pain-free process for us.

We would have waited until summer to do this but we are building an automated storage and retrieval system and are expecting to begin loading the bound periodicals into it in May. We wanted to get the JSTOR volumes off the shelves before then.

Buddy Pennington
Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian
University of Missouri - Kansas City
800 East 51st Street
Kansas City, MO  64110
Phone: 816-235-1548
Fax: 816-333-5584
Email: penningtonb@umkc.edu

UMKC University Libraries: Discovery. Knowledge. Empowerment.

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Ken Siegert
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 11:19 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Selling of Journals, Donations of Journals, mostly Jstor

Hello,

We are looking at *maybe* withdrawing large runs of journal material, mostly duplicated on Jstor.  I have a few questions.

Has anyone had any luck in selling their old Jstor material?  Typically, the Periodicals Service Company is the only company that is ever interested in our material, although rarely in our Jstor material.

What about donating the material?  Is the shipping cost prohibitive?  I know that some companies, like United States Book Exchange won't even take Jstor titles.

When others have withdrawn their Jstor print collections, how have you handled the process?  Have you done it all at once as a summer project, pulled titles on an on-going basis?

Thanks,

Ken

----------

Ken Siegert
Acquisitions Assistant
Electronic Resources & Periodicals / U.S. Documents
Shadek-Fackenthal Library
Franklin & Marshall College
P.O. Box 3003
Lancaster, PA  17604-3003

Phone -     (717) 291-4219
Fax -     (717) 291-4160