-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Discarding bound journals...
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 09:46:29 -0500
From: "Pennington, Buddy" <buddy.pennington@rockhurst.edu>

Hey all,

Our library, like most, is facing a serious problem with not having the
space to keep bound journals.  We are thinking about discarding titles,
and
I was wondering how others are doing it and if there are any
'guidelines' to
doing it.  Options that I am considering are:

1.  Discarding older volumes (especially pre-1940).  I have thought
about
discarding the earliest 10 years of older runs and maybe doing that
every 5
or 10 years.  Research indicates that older articles, like older books,
aren't used as much by library users.  Of course, the older volumes are
the
ones that are not available through FT databases and document delivery.
However, we were planning on checking OCLC to see how many libraries
have
the volumes we would be getting rid of.  In this way, we could tell if
the
volumes were readily available elsewhere or if they were relatively rare
and
needed to be kept.

2.  Discarding short runs of titles.  We have some titles were we only
one a
few years (several in the 1970's and 1980's).  It seems to me to be
counter-intuitive to keep such short runs on our shelves.

If you are faced with the same task, let me know what your library is
doing!

Buddy Pennington
Acquisitions/Serials Librarian
Rockhurst University Greenlease Library
buddy.pennington@rockhurst.edu
#816-501-4143