Significance of Weeding Library Material in the Context of Collection Management in University Libraries. (original) (raw)

2013, Journal of Library and Information Communication Technology (JLICT) Vol.2 No.1 June 2013. P.65-74.

Collection building in university libraries is a continuous process getting the volumes added on shelves requiring stack space; additional stack rooms in library building, finances and staff for maintaining them. Collection development includes selection acquisition, processing, arrangement and maintenance including weeding out of reading materials. The collection of any university library contains monographs, Theses/Dissertations, Text books, books, serials, CD-ROM or online databases, reference books etc. Library’s collection development policy should help the users by providing efficient and easy location of materials quick and timely services to the users in accordance with the main organization‘s objectives. Libraries need to draw the criteria for evaluation and use of library material in terms of its significance, use and currency content of the library material. The first step is to identify the "core collection" which accounts for permanent value and use by their students, research scholars and faculty, while the later could be the special or exclusive collections, rare books those bring prestige to the library. The usefulness of earlier editions of reference books, back volumes of journals and news papers when the latest editions are purchased is to be assessed by the library. Value of the content needs to be evaluated in the context of ever changing subjects, curriculum and research projects. To avoid the junk material accumulated in the library and to maintain collection intact precautions should be taken from the selection of information material itself by procuring the latest editions of subject books, text books. Faculty also should be suggested to selecting the required books from the publisher’s latest catalogs rather than choosing from supplier’s lists to please them. Libraries should not accept all the kinds of donations or gifts unless they are rare classics that need to be preserved for future generations. Additionally certain types of library material is getting obsolete over the period and not required to be kept in the library any more. These outdated and unused books are incurring heavy costs to library and slow down or even obstructing the workflow of library management in many ways. There is no adequate space available in the library with no additional funds for extension of building to accommodate ever growing collection. Further the paper discusses some criteria and methods for evaluating the collection so that unused material in the library can be identified and weeded out. Occasional weeding of library material enable library to update the collection with useful fresh stock and make it visible to their users. As such there are no prevailing standards or procedures for weeding out the unused books. Weeding cannot be done as one time measure; it should be a continuous process. The unused and mutilated items are to be accumulated for discarding as per the policies framed according to the recommendations of the committee. National Knowledge Commission has suggested that library collection should be dynamic remains relevant to the user communities. It also mentions that except in the case of national repositories, the weeding out of books should be a regular process and should evolve a weeding out policy, approved by the competent authority. Every library thus should form their own policy for weeding out the materials in consultation with the subject experts and document it so that it will form as a guiding policy for future operations.