Presented at ACRL in March 2015. Part 3 of a three-speaker panel.

1. Weed It and Reap at Wake Forest
ACRL Conference
March 28, 2015

2. About Wake Forest
• Borderline research
library (yes ASERL,
no ARL)
• 7628 FTE
• Z. Smith Reynolds
(ZSR) Library serves
6202 FTE

3. ZSR Building Situation
• Fundraising in
process for planned
renovations to main
building
• High-density offsite
storage
• Opened 2010
• ~300K capacity
• Not yet full

5. Excluded from Analysis Pre-SCS
• Anything not a book on paper (e-books, DVDs...)
• Anything added after July 1, 2008
• Special Collections & Government Documents locations
• Suppressed bibliographic records
• Most serials (based on location code)
N.B. We did include Reference
Total analyzed: 762,597 items (out of 1.4M)

6. GreenGlass Parameters
Also: Resources for College
Libraries inclusion

7. GreenGlass Output

8. More GreenGlass Output

9. Even More GreenGlass

10. Also Spreadsheet

11. Handle the Preservation List First
• At WFU, defined Preservation List as 10 or fewer U.S.
holdings
• These volumes stored offsite
• Discussed with Library Planning Committee first
• Broadcast to all faculty via newsletter
• Only one complaint

12. Shifting Goals
• Began as mass weeding project
• Then mass storage project
• Then not-as-massive storage project

13. Test It Out First!
• Used sample call
numbers to test out the
impact of various
schemes
• Did three different tests
at different call numbers
• What would be
removed? What would
remain?

14. Our Final Decision
0-use, 11+ U.S. Holdings, Certain Call Numbers
Move Offsite
• A
• BF
• G (plain), GA, GB, GC, GE
• H (plain), HE, HF, HG, HJ, HM, HN, HQ, HS, HT,
HV, HX
• J, K, L
• ML, MT
• P (plain), PB, PD, PH, PJ, PK, PL, PM
• Q (plain), QB, QC, QD, QE, QH, QK, QL, QM, QP,
QR
• R, S, T, U, V, Z
Keep in Stacks
• C, D, E, F
• N
• The parts of B, G, H, M, P, and Q that aren't listed
on the left

15. Prepare for Uneven Impacts
• 1st Draft: 15% of entire analyzed items, but 82% of A
• 2nd Draft: 8% of items, but 39% of L

16. Aftermath in Z: 61% Stored

17. Other Details to Consider
• Multi-volume sets where just one volume matches
criteria
• Duplicate copies (for Preservation pulls)
• Procedure for dealing with not-on-shelf items,
especially for Preservation pulls

18. Key Distinction about Storage
Unlike weeding, storage
decisions are
reversible, at least at the micro level

19. Lessons Learned
• Test out planned pulls before executing
• Be prepared to change plans mid-stream AND/OR…
• Do a better job of determining your capacity and
collection size in advance

20. Thanks!
Carol Cramer
Head of Collection Management
Wake Forest University
cramercj@wfu.edu
These slides are available on the ACRL 2015 Virtual Conference.