A Philosophical Exploration of Weeding – Within the Library with the Lead Pipe
Who would wish to kill this dashing fellow, nineteenth century writer of widespread historic novels, performs, and poetry? Not I. However I did discover myself weeding a lot of his works in my library—and feeling horrible about it. This text is the results of a extra critical examination of these horrible emotions. Photograph credit score: “Statue of Sir Walter Scott, Princes Road, Edinburgh,” by Calotype46 (CC-NC-SA 2.0)
In Transient: Weeding a library assortment, whereas a completely important a part of assortment administration, is a way more advanced concern than library literature—and library practitioners—want to admit. It isn’t simply an mental and bodily course of however an emotional one, wedded to deep psychological, cultural, and even metaphysical points. This text explores a few of the the reason why weeding could be so heartbreaking, tough, and depressing.
The Guarantees of Weeding
I’m not an enormous fan of gardening, however there’s one green-thumb process I hate greater than all others: yanking up the weeds, these nasty little suckers that appear to pop up in a single day within the spring and summer season. Like washing dishes or making the mattress or doing laundry, weeding is a process that’s by no means completed, but vital to do, except you wish to reside with squalor and filth and lawsuits from neighbors who’re involved concerning the forest in your entrance yard.
You understand the place that is going, fellow librarians.
“Weeding” library collections, often known as deselection (in additional formal circles) or “taking out the trash” (much less so), is a process that’s each dreaded and crucial. Some would possibly argue with the thesis that repeatedly weeding the gathering is sweet for libraries, a lot as there are those that would possibly argue that there are not any indicators of local weather change. (One want solely take a look at the recent outcry against weeding within the Urbana Free Library system to see this concept in motion.) Regardless of this, the skilled library (versus normal public, as in Urbana) consensus and analysis and simply plain widespread sense all agree that with out weeding, our libraries would endure.
Certainly, common and even handed weeding all however ensures shinier hair and better GRE scores: it will increase circulation, saves house, makes readers happier, and improves workers effectivity (Slote 1997). Typical statements about weeding within the library literature affirm that “weeding is a elementary exercise that have to be inspired and embraced” (Dilevko 2003, 93) and that “with out an ongoing weeding program, a group can shortly age and turn into tough to make use of” (Evans 2005, 295).
Regardless of this overwhelming proof, librarians—together with me, I freely admit—nonetheless gnash our enamel and rend our clothes, metaphorically, when it’s decided that Weeding Time is nigh.
A Story of Two Weedings
It’s not my first time on the weeding rodeo. Once I began my present place at a big city library, in 2006, I confronted a fiction assortment of about 40,000 gadgets that had not been weeded in additional than a decade. The shelvers have been crying within the workroom as a result of that they had carts upon carts of homeless books. It took me practically 9 months of every day work (which I principally hated) to finish that weeding. Since then, I’ve been diligent about my annual assortment analysis and purging, and I’m completely happy to report that shelvers hardly ever cry within the workroom, at the least for fiction-related causes.
However final spring I used to be requested to weed a fiction assortment I’d been explicitly informed I couldn’t contact: storage. Not like my normal yearly weeding, this prospect thrilled me. These have been books that had not been evaluated for weeding, ever, or at the least within the 25 years or so that they’d been languishing in my library’s basement, and it confirmed. Image essentially the most terrible “terrible library books” within the Awful Library Books weblog: stained covers, crumbly pages, with precise mildew on the within and dusty covers on the skin. In keeping with my 347-page monstrosity of a not-circulated-in-three-years checklist, a lot of the books in storage had not been checked out within the 14 years since we applied our new circulation system.
Positive, there have been nonetheless powerful calls to be made, and I needed to get it proper. For instance, ought to I weed the pristine but award-winning worldwide literary title not circulated in 5 years? What a couple of minor work by Balzac? Wait, was it actually minor, or was my data of 19th-century French novelists simply miserably missing? Was Frank Yerby, the mid-20th-century African-American writer, thought-about vital sufficient, both literarily or culturally, to benefit this a lot cupboard space? And worst of all, did we actually want all of Sir Walter Scott’s roughly 50 million bazillion novels? His oeuvre took up practically three ft of packed cabinets, and selecting which gadgets deserved to go to the chopping block and which must be preserved was not straightforward.
The Hollywood situation in my head was that my library was the final library left on earth, and I used to be the librarian who needed to determine what would keep and what would go. What a duty! In fact, I knew I wasn’t actually the one particular person deciding what was value conserving within the literary canon and what deserved to be culled, however I took my little piece of duty for what the general public library goers of the Tulsa, Oklahoma space would see was value conserving in a library very severely.
Nonetheless, for every single should-I-weed-or-should-I-save guide on my checklist, there have been at the least 99 extra that have been neither award-winning, by recognized authors, nor even talked about in Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia. (To not point out the stained covers, crumbly pages, and so forth.) In different phrases, I felt fairly secure in believing that the literary canon, or my tiny nook of duty for it, was secure.
It ought to have been a snap. It ought to have been a celebration. Not like my earlier weeding durations, during which I grimly gritted my enamel and considered England, I ought to have been using a wave of elation day-after-day as I tore by storage as a result of I knew I used to be on the aspect of the angels. My trigger was righteous, and I had the CREW manual to show it (Larson 2008).
But one thing shocking occurred as I began to weed, and didn’t cease till it was over: I used to be overwhelmed with all the same old unfavorable emotions of yore. Guilt. Sorrow. Remorse, anguish, angst: you title it, I felt it. Regardless of widespread sense, logical reasoning, ethical authority, and sensible necessity (our library is closing for renovation quickly and our collections have to be drastically lowered for the brand new house), I discovered the duty heartbreaking, tough, and principally depressing. I felt like I used to be murdering the in-flesh Sir Walter Scott, not simply copies of his works.
Why was it so onerous?
You received’t discover the reply in looking out the library literature about deselection. (Nicholson Baker’s 2001 Double Fold is a notable exception, although he’s writing extra towards librarians than as a library insider. I’ll circle again to him on the very, very finish.) Positive, you’ll discover fast mentions of the “significantly much less enjoyable jobs of steady analysis and deselection” (Gregory 2011, 126) and the transient acknowledgement that “weeding is personally tough for a lot of librarians due to their innate love of books” (Dilevko 2003, 93), however principally you’ll discover sensible articles, internet sites, manuals, and books that specify how you can decide what to withdraw (Larson 2008; Disher 2007; Roy 1990), who ought to weed, why weeding is important, when weeding ought to occur, how sure libraries dealt with weeding tasks (Banks 2002), and what to say to communities about weeding tasks so there received’t be a backlash (McCormack 2008).
I used to be quickly fooled by the title of 1 article, “The Darkish Facet of Assortment Administration” (Ward 2008), nevertheless it turned out that it by no means addressed the darkish aspect I used to be particularly eager about. The primary time I tackled deselection in my library, Merle Jacob’s “Weeding the Fiction Assortment: Or Ought to I Dump Peyton Place?” (2001) was significantly useful as a result of it was particularly about fiction in a public library. However even this terrific article, whereas addressing practically each different facet of withdrawing books, elides over the withdrawer, particularly the very actual emotional agony that many librarians expertise as they full this vital but odious process.
Oh, the Feels!
It’s my competition that weeding a library assortment, whereas a completely important a part of assortment administration, is a way more advanced concern than library literature—and library practitioners—want to admit. It isn’t simply an mental and bodily course of however an emotional one, wedded to deep psychological, cultural, and even metaphysical points. Moreover, the feelings concerned are sometimes messy, wild, contradictory, and mired in questions of id, neighborhood, and morality. In different phrases, it’s the type of points library and data science researchers are inclined to draw back from as a result of they don’t simply lend themselves to charts and numbers and the siren name of “goal” fact.
However we should face the truth that weeding means greater than we predict it does. Pretending that it’s solely a matter of bettering circulation statistics, even the loftier targets of creating a group extra accessible to our customers or preserving cultural artifacts for future generations, offers an incomplete image of the method. Moreover, it will probably invalidate the very actual emotions of these doing the weeding.
That is an uncomfortable set of ideas for librarians to just accept. We’re thinkers, not feelers! We work from our frontal lobes, thanks very a lot. The very suggestion that emotion performs an element in our choices is anathema to our conception of ourselves as clearheaded, dispassionate professionals who use logic and statistics to judge our collections and decide one of the best supplies for customers.
Maybe this doesn’t describe you. Maybe you’re an English Literature main like me with a penchant for old-school humanist psychologists like Carl Rogers, otherwise you reject the worn out subjective-objective dichotomy I’ve arrange. Okay, chances are you’ll be considering: after all librarians usually are not unfeeling automatons; we will assume and really feel and do our jobs properly, and weeding is each mental and emotional. So what? Why discover the deeper causes that weeding could be so tough, then?
I want I may say it’s as a result of I wish to formulate an motion plan to make weeding a better course of for librarians and take away a few of the anguish and guilt. Perhaps at some point I’ll get round to writing a self-help information (“When Librarians Love Too A lot: Tips on how to Say Goodbye to Your Ebook Mates With out Tears”), full with recommendations for a cleaning deselection ritual alongside the traces of a actuality TV recreation present (“You might have been checked out completely; goodbye!”). However what I’m extra eager about doing proper now’s paying witness to what has solely been fleetingly referred to within the official library document. I wish to name consideration to the deeper meanings of weeding, and acknowledge and legitimize why it may be so darned tough.
In different phrases: I wish to dig into the true “darkish aspect” of deselection so I received’t really feel so unhealthy about feeling unhealthy after I weed.
Within the spirit of a philosophical relatively than logical exploration, listed here are a few of the emotional, metaphysical, anthropological, and psychoanalytical causes I imagine weeding is tough for librarians:
Cause #1: We’re all hoarders at coronary heart. (And by “we,” I imply human beings.)
It’s de rigueur to declare, “To be human is to [fill in the blank]”: snicker, put on humorous hats, sing Katy Perry songs, assume, mourn. However one method to full that assertion that seems to be indisputably, uniquely human is “personal stuff.” Certainly, Jean Paul Sartre recognized three main types of human existence: to do, to be, and to have (my emphasis). (Apparently, the three states typically get intermingled in sudden methods—extra on that later.)
In 2010, after practically 20 years of devoted analysis into compulsive hoarding—together with intensive interviews and therapeutic interventions with quite a few sufferers—Dr. Randy Frost and Dr. Gail Steketee, professors of psychology and social work, respectively, wrote Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the That means of Issues (2010). Lengthy earlier than the tv present “Hoarders,” Dr. Frost and Dr. Steketee have been wrestling with why some individuals collected so many objects (and typically animals) that it ruined their lives. These hoarding behaviors made it inconceivable to work, have significant romantic and household relationships, or interact in different life-enriching actions.
Whereas the profiles of the hoarders they talk about present simply how completely different these sufferers are from non-hoarders, the distinction is generally in diploma, not within the primary need to build up possessions. As they write, “The boundaries between regular and irregular blur in relation to hoarding. All of us turn into connected to our possessions and save issues different individuals wouldn’t. So all of us share a few of the hoarding orientation” (14). Proof for this assertion is present in junk drawers, overstuffed garages, and storage items throughout the nation.
Now, a library’s assortment of books is completely different in particulars from a person’s family assortment of newspapers, tin cans, footwear, and different objects. For one, a library assortment is paid for and owned by an establishment, not one particular person, whereas private accumulations embrace a wide range of objects, not simply books or different info sources. However in broad strokes, each library collections and particular person teams of possessions share the identical widespread denominator of springing from the impulse to have. Moreover, the bigger causes libraries need to have are sometimes eerily just like the bigger causes people need to have. Which takes us to the subsequent motive deselection could be tough…
Cause #2: We infuse objects (on this case, books) with deeper meanings, significantly with id.
Who we’re (or who we predict we’re, or, in an Alice-In-Wonderland type of means, who we predict we wish others to assume we’re) is commonly proven by what we personal. For instance: I put on purple patterned tights to indicate my quirky persona and need for nonconformity; the guy sitting subsequent to you on the stoplight drives a Prius to let others see that he’s each profitable and inexperienced; my niece wears a treble-clef necklace and an “Orch Dork” t-shirt to indicate others she is a string musician with a bent for geek-ery.
Equating possessions with id will not be a brand new thought by any means, nevertheless it was first popularized by William James and additional taken up by psychologists and cultural anthropologists to clarify the connection between inanimate objects and the deeper meanings people connect to them. As James wrote, “It’s clear that between what a person calls me and what he merely calls mine the road is tough to attract. We really feel and act about sure issues which can be ours very a lot as we really feel and act about ourselves” (quoted in Frost 2010, 48).
Greater than a century later, in The That means of Issues: Home Symbols and the Self (1981), Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton continued this exploration of the position of objects in an individual’s definition of who they’re, who they’ve been, and who they want to turn into: “Previous recollections, current experiences, and future goals of every particular person are inextricably linked to the objects that comprise his or her atmosphere” (ix) and might have a major half in not simply reflecting however creating the self. Certainly, they go even additional and conflate objects with the self, arguing that whereas it’s straightforward to think about objects as expressions of the self, it’s tougher to confess that the issues one makes use of are the truth is a part of one’s self; not in any mystical or metaphorical sense however in chilly, concrete actuality. My outdated living-room chair with its worn velvet cloth, musty odor, creaking springs, and heat assist has typically formed indicators in my consciousness. These indicators are a part of what organizes my consciousness, as a result of my self is inseparable from the signal course of that constitutes consciousness. That chair is as a lot a part of my self as something can presumably be (Cziksentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981, 14).
As soon as once more, equating a person proudly owning specific objects (purple tights, Prius, treble-clef necklace) and a library proudly owning specific books or info assets (Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, schematics for an oil pipeline, metropolis directories from 1906) might seem to be a stretch—till you think about how every case of possession makes an attempt to precise a deeper that means of a specific id.
Let’s again up. Take into account that librarians with assortment growth duties take this duty severely. Creating and sustaining a helpful assortment that fulfills the library’s and, within the case of educational libraries, the faculty or college’s, overarching mission is likely one of the pillars of librarianship. Librarians need the collections they’re stewarding to characterize one of the best info in the easiest way for a specific inhabitants, the supposed customers. One other means of explaining what assortment librarians do is to say that they create an id for his or her libraries by the objects that make up that assortment.
For instance, taken as a complete, an “city fiction” paperback assortment at a public library has a really completely different id than a topographical map assortment at a technical faculty’s library. Simply as objects assist outline people, so specific books in a group assist outline a library’s bigger “self.”
In Stuff, one profiled hoarder, Irene (who, apparently sufficient, accomplished an MLIS diploma and was a well-respected cataloguer, although this place hastened her hoarding difficulties, as she typically introduced dwelling outdated newspapers her library had weeded), illustrates the possessions-as-identity thought—in addition to its final conundrum in relation to deselection (in her case, clearing her home of piles of outdated newspapers and different objects): “If I throw an excessive amount of away, there’ll be nothing left of me” (99). No marvel weeding a library’s assortment can typically really feel like slicing off one’s limbs! In some metaphysical or, on the very least, metaphorical means, it’s like carving off little bits of the institutional id we’ve created and letting them die. The worry that doing so will kill that id (so there’s “nothing left of me”) could be crippling.
Cause #3: We don’t wish to squander Chance… or mess with Historical past.
Hoarders are sometimes pegged as missing not directly (not being able to discern between treasure and trash, for instance), however Dr. Frost and Dr. Steketee flip that round and argue that hoarders the truth is have one thing others don’t: a novel skill to “take a look at [objects] and see limitless potential, limitless utility, and limitless waste” (15). Within the case of Irene, who was so involved that eliminating her objects would negate who she was, “issues represented alternative and an opportunity to expertise all that life needed to supply” (43).
For instance, she didn’t wish to throw away a scrap of paper with an unknown telephone quantity on it, regardless that she didn’t know what it was for, as a result of it may be a quantity that may result in one thing vital for her.
Librarians who’re hesitant to discard gadgets typically have the identical impulse: if I get rid of this specific guide about magic methods out of the gathering, will it imply that some little one received’t be taught the one particular trick that may assist her get eager about magic, which could then permit her to be accepted by different youngsters? If I weed this guide about Catholic demise rituals in 14th-century Italy, will I be stopping some graduate scholar from finishing his thesis analysis on time? These might seem to be ridiculous eventualities, however that doesn’t imply librarians don’t spin tales like this as they contact every guide and determine whether or not it ought to keep or go. (I can’t be the one one who does this!)
What fascinates me about that is that, for librarians, the hesitancy is all for the sake of others. We’re not those who wish to be taught the magic methods or delve into 14th-century Catholic rituals, however we wish to protect that risk for individuals we’d not ever meet. Once more, it’s our skilled duty as assortment administration librarians that compels us to think about the long run (and present) pursuits of others.
The opposite aspect of the concept that “the kids are our future” is that the wealthy troves of information from the previous deserve passionate advocates prepared to make sure their survival. We should save the books for the sake of posterity! There may be nothing mistaken with this aspiration. Certainly, it’s a bedrock library worth to protect assets (significantly books) that characterize the data, tradition, and historical past for these not but born. It turns into an issue when that impulse is magnified and metastasized into the library model of “Gray Gardens,” both by perfectionism or an incapacity to discriminate between what posterity want to preserve and what greatest belongs in historical past’s dustbin.
Lastly, some writers and philosophers determine the intuition for amassing collections (whether or not of work, Tom Cruise memorabilia, or, after all, books) as a method to reduce worry of demise. By accumulating and curating a group that can reside on after you might be gone, you might be not directly transmitting a part of your self (bear in mind: we conflate objects with our id) to the long run (Frost and Steketee 2010, 55). If that is so, is it actually that far-fetched to see that weeding a library assortment can really feel like going through our personal demise? And may we truthfully not perceive that holding on to the gadgets within the assortment is a twisted (if unacknowledged) method to defy demise?
Cause #4: The extra books now we have, the safer and safer we really feel.
Worry is a primal (some would say the primal) emotion deeply embedded into each human psyches and brains. Neuroscientists have situated the constructions (the amygdalae) the place worry is processed as proper above the deepest and most primitive a part of the mind—newer than the constructions that management respiratory and circulation, however evolutionarily historical in comparison with the logical, considering components. There are quite a few widespread works that specify this; one in all my favorites, regardless of the writer’s recent professional difficulties, is Jonah Lehrer’s How We Resolve (2009).
Worry doesn’t solely happen as a response to an imminent menace reminiscent of a rattlesnake on the strolling path in entrance of you. The alternative feeling of security happens for a lot of as a result of there are environmental indicators—a smiling grandmother, dinner on the desk—that assuages our fears. Subsequently, for many individuals, worry also can spring up when these security indicators are taken away.
That is one clarification for why hoarders acquire objects within the numbers that they do: the objects ship security indicators that make the hoarders really feel protected. In Stuff, Irene serves as one other instance of this precept. When having a tough day or week, she simply desires “to come back dwelling and collect my treasures round me” with the intention to really feel higher (Frost and Steketee 2010, 83-85).
Within the case of librarians and library collections, we, too, are inclined to really feel safer when our assortment numbers are sturdy, and for good motive. The “numbers recreation” has been recognized as a barrier to deselection in libraries, although extra for mental than emotional causes. The amount of books in a library’s assortment is used as a sign of high quality for exterior functions. As Gregory, summarizing Slote, explains: “Numbers of books and different gadgets are time-honored standards utilized in requirements of accreditation in addition to inner studies and resolution making” (121). If a library reduces its numbers by weeding books, it will probably affect how the neighborhood and leaders view it, resulting in much less funding or lack of accreditation. The easy equation finally ends up being “Extra books = Higher library.”
Whereas that is an mental argument involving a “reliance on seemingly goal statistics and numbers” (Gregory 2011, 121), the emotional part that helps accumulating excessive numbers of books is intriguing to think about. How a lot is preserving assortment numbers a method to survive funds cuts and talk high quality, and the way a lot is a matter of having the ability to “collect our treasures” round us? Most librarians will admit that strolling by one’s full (and neatly straightened) stacks can typically produce a strong feeling of satisfaction—one would possibly even say security.
Cause #5: We don’t wish to waste assets.
A last phrase about how low-cost librarians are. (By which I imply: involved about environmental sustainability and decreasing waste, after all!) On the Venn diagram of hoarders and most librarians, that is an space during which the circles overlap. Simply as hoarders are monumentally involved about losing gadgets that may nonetheless have utility, librarians typically really feel that throwing away books is throwing away cash. We’d as properly activate all of our lights, commerce in our Prius for a gas-guzzling SUV, and begin a bonfire stoked by our new purchases!
Concluding Feelings
It’s been a 12 months since I completed weeding my library’s storage assortment of grownup fiction. Given the entire angst and guilt and remorse I felt on the time, how do I really feel now? Fairly darn nice, because it seems. I’m undecided what lesson this offers precisely, although I do know the additional I’m away from the expertise, the better it’s to focus on all of these shiny completely happy advantages of weeding that library literature guarantees. The truth is, it feels a bit of bit like surviving a five-mile hike by an enormous thunderstorm: I’m certain glad it’s over, and perhaps subsequent time I’ll bear in mind to put on some rain gear. Contemplating the entire emotional the reason why weeding could be fraught with problem is a type of philosophical umbrella for me: it lets me really feel my emotions (because the kindly tv youngsters’s host Mr. Rogers might need stated) after which do my job anyway.
It additionally helps to know that the majority, if not all, of the books I’ve weeded now go to Higher World Books, a web based group that sells our cast-offs and provides my library a return on what’s bought. Which suggests Sir Walter Scott’s damage might need been a mere flesh wound. Maybe another reader is having fun with his adventures and conserving him alive.
A Coda
I accomplished this essay final December as the ultimate paper for a graduate class in Assortment Growth for my MLIS diploma. My professor made quite a few helpful and cogent feedback, together with the suggestion that I usher in an outline of Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, an impassioned plea for libraries to not discard collections, significantly newspapers and different periodicals. I needed to snicker, as a result of, the week after I accomplished the paper (however earlier than I acquired my professor’s feedback), I tackled an overdue private weeding challenge: winnowing my very own assortment of way-too-many books. Guess what guide I made a decision I’d in all probability not ever get round to studying and may donate to Goodwill? If it weren’t so completely ironic, I’d be fairly emotional about that.
Acknowledgements
An infinite thanks to Dr. Betsy Van der Veer “Doc” Martens of the College of Oklahoma College of Library and Info Research, who was not solely a direct and particular assist for this specific article however has been a normal and beneficiant supply of inspiration and assist as I stagger towards the MLIS end line.
Brett Bonfield supplied sage recommendation and exact edits to the article that preserved my voice whereas hunting down (sorry) a few of the rhetorical underbrush. An enormous Oklahoma whoop of gratitude to him.
Works Cited & Consulted
Banks, Julie. “Weeding Ebook Collections within the Age of the Web.” Assortment Constructing 21 no.3 (2002): 113-119.
Cziksentmihalyi, Mihali and Eugene Rochberg-Halton. The That means of Issues: Home Symbols and the Self. New York: Cambridge College Press, 1981.
Dilevko, Juris and Lisa Gottlieb. “Weed to Obtain: a Basic A part of the Public Library Mission?” Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Providers 27 no. 1 (2003): 73-96.
Disher, Wayne. Crash Course in Assortment Growth. Westport, CT: Libraries Limitless, 2007.
Evans, G. Edward and Margaret Saponaro. Growing Library and Info Heart Collections. Westport, CT: Libraries Limitless, 2005.
Frost, Randy O. and Gail Steketee. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the That means of Issues. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
Gregory, Vicki L. Assortment Growth and Administration for twenty first Century Library Collections. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2011.
Jacob, Merle. “Weeding the Fiction Assortment: Or Ought to I Dump Peyton Place?” Reference & Person Providers Quarterly 40 no. 3 (2001): 234-239.
Larson, Jeannette. CREW: A Weeding Guide for Trendy Libraries. 2012. http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/index.html (accessed December 3, 2012).
Lehrer, Jonah. How We Resolve. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.
McCormack, Nancy. “When Weeding Hits the Headlines: Tips on how to Cease your Library from Making (That Type of) Information.” Feliciter (2008): 277-278.
Roy, Loriene. “Weeding With out Tears: Goal and Subjective Standards Utilized in Figuring out Books to be Weeded in Public Library Collections.” Assortment Administration (1990): 83-93.
Slote, Stanley J. Weeding Library Collections: Library Weeding Strategies. Englewood, CO: Libraries Limitless, 1997.
Ward, Suzanne M. and Mary C. Agaard. “The Darkish Facet of Assortment Administration: Deselecting Serials from a Analysis Library’s Storage Facility Utilizing Worldcat Assortment Evaluation.” Assortment Administration 33 no. 4 (2008): 272-287.