Subscriptions. Notice of titles being considered for withdrawal will be circulated
among academic departments before a final decision is made, and input and suggestions are
welcomed by the library. The final decision, however, as to adding, retaining, or
dropping titles, is the responsibility of the library. Paper issues of discarded titles
will be made available to other institutions before being remanded for recycling.
Books. From time to time, the professional staff evaluates the collection in various
subject areas, flagging items which appear to be obsolete and without great historical
value, superseded editions, multiple copies no longer needed, and books which though
useful when published have received over the years insufficient use to justify their
space on the shelves. Titles are checked against various bibliographies, e.g., Books
for College Libraries, American Reference Books Annual, or other subject
bibliographies.
An appropriate department chair or faculty member may be invited to review these items,
after which they are either withdrawn or replaced on the shelf. The final decision on
whether an item is to be deselected (weeded) rests with the Director.
Audio-Visual Materials. Audio-visual materials in obsolete formats, for which
suitable equipment for playback is no longer available for reasonable prices, will be
removed from the collections. If the content of the material is still needed, an effort
will be made to replace the item with a current format of the same or equivalent content.
In rare cases when the content is significant and no commercially available replacement
is available, the library may choose to reformat the content to a current medium.
Materials identified for removal are forwarded to the Technical Services department
for withdrawal. Withdrawn items, together with duplicate gifts and other miscellaneous
items not wanted for the collection, may be offered to Better World Books or to other
institutions (OhioLINK discards list), or placed on sale at modest prices with the
proceeds being regarded as miscellaneous income to the library.
The final decision on whether to withdraw a specific item from the library's
collections rests with the Director of the Library.
