PRUNING, WEEDING AND GRAFTING: STRATEGIES FOR THE EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF LIBRARY STOCK
| Pages | 9-15 |
| Date | 01 March 1993 |
| Published date | 01 March 1993 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01435129310027219 |
| Author | John Arfield |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
VOLUME 14 NUMBER 3
1993
Pruning,
Weeding and
Grafting
STRATEGIES FOR THE EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF LIBRARY STOCK
John Arfield
INTRODUCTION
In June 1992 the report of the UFC/PCFC
Working Group on Capital Policy[l] (the
Pearce report) considered, among other
things, the management of space in higher
education, an issue which is once again
becoming critical in many universities as
student numbers greatly increase. It is a
particular problem for many libraries:
buildings erected or extended in the growth
years of the 1960s and early 1970s have
reached their planned capacity, capital funds
for new building projects have been scarce.
Against this background the increasing
availability of certain types of information in
non-print form, the continuing rise in the
price of books and, especially, periodicals,
and the general pressure on library budgets
raise complex issues of stock collection and
management.
The main library at Reading University
was built in 1963 and extended in 1986. Parts
of the building were becoming full and the
problem of how most effectively to plan for
the use of space over the next few years was
an obvious topic to tackle as a project for
the British Library-funded course "Policy
Making and Strategic Management". This
article outlines the approach which was
adopted.
EARLIER WORK
Some work had already been done in 1989 in
response to an immediate problem. The floor
of the library which housed the law, social
sciences and history collections had become
Library Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, 1993, pp. 9-15,
© MCB University Press, 0143-5124
full. In addition the merger with a nearby
college of higher education was about to
result in the transfer of stock to the main
library. This work had had three objectives
which were to:
(1) calculate the space currently occupied
and the savings required in order to
accommodate incoming stock over the
next five years;
(2) establish criteria for identifying stock
whose value to the university was
insufficient to justify its retention;
(3) demonstrate the likely effect of applying
such criteria to the stock under review.
Since reliable figures for occupancy were not
available, the monograph holdings of the
floor were measured subject by subject. Then
a profile of the borrowing from each section
of the stock was established by noting the
date of the last borrowing of a sample of
books. This revealed considerable variations
in levels of use between different parts of the
stock. For example, although in the previous
ten years only 8 per cent of the management
stock had not been borrowed, 33 per cent of
the social sciences stock, 57 per cent of the
books on religion and 49 per cent of the
history books had not left the library in that
period. The books that had not been
borrowed were further analysed to exclude
those which could be regarded as core source
material and whose utility could not
therefore be gauged by borrowings. Typical
of this material were items in series published
by local record societies, collected editions of
standard authors, collections of historical
documents, standard histories and other
major collections. It was clear that much of
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