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Annotated Bibliography: An Ugly Weed: Innovative Deselection to Address a Shelf Space Crisis

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Arbeeny, P., & Chittenden, L. (2018). An Ugly Weed: Innovative Deselection to Address a Shelf Space Crisis. Journal Of Library Innovation, 5(1). Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-clarion.klnpa.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=f9804ddd-f21b-47d7-a2c4-431993097c2a%40sdc-v-sessmgr04

In 2012 Fort Lewis College in Durango Colorado was faced with an interesting problem- one month to weed out 3,000 to 4,000 items from their collection, to make room for more study spaces in their library, as well as freeing much-needed shelf space.  This problem was made harder due to the departure of two staff members right before this project was to begin. The library was now down to four total staff members, making the already daunting prospect even harder.
The staff created a fast weeding process, with the whole collection in a spreadsheet, making use of keyword filtering, as well as filtering out books that had not been checked out since 2003, the only exception being those that were core titles or authors to the programs at the college. Using the computer they were able to filter the collection to quickly find books that they had multiple copies of, books that were out of date, and books they had in languages that were not useful to the college (for example, any books in German were weeded, as the college no longer had a German Language program.) They were also able to narrow down most of their collection to primary sources. Though this they were able to weed out 3,900 books out of their collection within the month.
This was an interesting experiment in weeding, especially the use of a spreadsheet to weed. Though it was not a perfect system, given the time restraints it was particularly effective. 
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