Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 15:32:41 -0600
From: Martha Coleman <mcoleman@systema.westark.edu>
Subject: Re: Newspapers (Ingrid Grimes)

We have several newspapers with various limited retentions.  We keep
local papers for the current 3 months (on June 1st we will have June,
May and April.)  Three shelves are used.  A label in the middle of
the shelf gives the title and how long we retain the paper.  Each end
of the shelf is labeled:
Current Month  1st - 15th          Current Month  16th - End of Month
Previous Month  1st - 15th        Previous Month  16th - End of Month
Two Months Ago  1st - 15th     Two Month Ago  16th - End of Month

One of the "end of the month" processing duties for Library Student
Assistants  is to discard the oldest month and drop the papers.

We keep Barron's and the Chronicle of Higher Education for one year.
We have 12 periodical boxes labeled for each month with the note:
Library Retains Current Year.   Previous years are available in
microform.    When the first issue of a month is received, the entire
contents of that box is discarded for the previous year.

Two titles are retained until microfilm is received.  The shelves are
labeled as above but we usually only have to use 2 shelves for those
papers.

We also keep 4 years of the Wall Street Journal.  I devoted 4
sections of shelving (with 6 shelves per section) to newspaper boxes.
(Highsmith Stor/File #25227)
Each box will hold one month of the WSJ and each 34" shelf will hold
2 months (boxes).  On the inside lid of each box there is a note to
the student to please leave the box on the table and let our student
assistants reshelve.  That way the papers can be placed neatly back
in the box.  Not a perfect solution but the shelves look neat and the
papers do get a LOT of use.

Hope this helps.   Martha Coleman   mcoleman@systema.westark.edu
                              Westark Community College   Ft.Smith,  AR