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Weeding or Rightsizing? 
Why Not Collection 
Adjustment?
Alejandra J. Nann, University of San Diego

ABSTR ACT Almost twenty years into the 21st century, libraries are 
under more pressure than ever to maximize use of their physical spaces, 
often through reduction in the size of print collections to allow for more 
study and collaborative user spaces. Print reduction is a balancing act 
of thoughtful review and stakeholder input, with assessment strictly 
by title circulation or book condition no longer acceptable in many 
academic environments. This session examines a new way of think-
ing about book and journal footprints in the library. What are the tools 
librarians can adopt to justify retaining current titles and housing future 
volumes? How do we involve stakeholders so that we see each other as 
partners with a common goal? What kind of workflow and time does 
this investment in adjusting the collection require and can it be scaled? 
This paper will examine these issues and offer practical advice from her 
professional background and experiences in adjusting a collection size 
based on renovation needs.

BACKGROUND

Copley Library is the University of San Diego’s undergraduate library. 
The full time enrollment is 8,900 students, which includes under-
graduate, graduate, and law school students. Copley library owns half 
a million monographic volumes and almost 3,000 print serials. The 
decision to review the collection from a different perspective started 
when the library obtained funding to renovate the building. 

With the new renovation, the library is not getting additional space 
for collaborative spaces or the current collection. Therefore, only a 
portion of the collection will return to campus. USD is working with 
Iron Mountain, a secure storage company, for the removal and storage 



Listen and Learn  225

of most of the library’s print collection, both monographs and jour-
nals. With such a short time frame, The Head of Collections, Access, 
and Discovery and I needed to come up with an efficient plan to evalu-
ate the entire print collection.

The idea of weeding is often met with politics and anxiety, both 
from librarians and the users. However the approach we went for, 
collection adjustment, encouraged us to be more thorough and more 
articulate, in hopes that it would lessen user concerns about our 
management of our collections. We knew it was possible by identi-
fying, compiling, and manipulating robust data about the collection 
using a variety of tools that many libraries already have access to.

WHY COLLECTION ADJUSTMENT?

Oftentimes librarians are focused on an end goal that creates a 
smaller footprint for collections and repurposed library space 
that includes weeding material. However, it may also be done for 
reasons that require more than a simplistic approach of just weeding 
material, including:

• Looking for offsite storage for some or most of the collection 
(e.g., self-owned storage or a third-party storage company)

• Working through large-scale collection withdrawals as part of 
merging collections across satellite libraries within an insti-
tution and/or affiliation

• Replacing print with non-print format
• Participating in resource-sharing arrangements (e.g., shared 

print programs, consortial sharing)
• Reviewing online overlap with print serials and print mono-

graph series
• Budgeting for on-demand programs for articles (e.g., Get it 

Now)
• Requesting funds for vendor deposit accounts (pay-per-article 

or streaming media)
• Cancelling subscriptions and using interlibrary loan for 

seldom-used journals
• Joining journal archiving consortiums (e.g., WEST Western 

Regional Storage Trust, Rosemont Shared Print Alliance, 
Center for Research Libraries)



226  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

The trigger for collection review may include resource-sharing 
arrangements and perpetual access to individual or packages of 
e-content rather than a more holistic review of each title. The need 
to adjust the size of the collection may include more than print books 
and journals; it can also include audiovisual material, government 
documents, microform, and even electronic resources. Frequently, 
you may have to move huge elements of the physical collection offsite. 
These large-scale efforts are frequently triggered by re-use of the 
space, either for more user collaboration or for another entity, like a 
lab or offices, etc., and are often at the command of those outside the 
library. It is not that none of these events have ever come up before 
now, but the amount of data and tools to manipulate it that are now 
available makes today’s efforts seem much more multi-dimensional.

Sensible collection adjustment is feasible, regardless of project 
size, as long as the right steps are taken. First the library must 
thoroughly consider the kinds of data that are meaningful, not 
just to withdraw or relocate material, but more importantly in 
retaining material. If the approach of the project is as a proactive, 
comprehensive discussion with campus stakeholders of the specific 
plan to retain specific material and the reasons behind it, perhaps it 
will provide additional support for materials that are moving off-site 
or withdrawing permanently. Collection adjustment requires those 
who perform it to become well-versed with the kinds of data available 
and also with the tools that help manipulate the data. Frequently 
these tools also allow access to the manipulated data in forms that are 
digestible for collaboration.

TOOLS AND DATA TO CONSIDER

We frequently extract a lot of data as part of our normal duties, espe-
cially from Sierra, our integrated library system (ILS), so we used Excel 
extensively as a moderately informed user. We found it to be the most 
robust spreadsheet application for manipulating data. 

However, our institution is a Google campus, so we started making 
extensive use of Google Sheets for sharing results of data extraction 
and review specifically for the collection adjustment process. It works 
much better as a collaboration platform within spreadsheet software 
because Google Sheets are live documents and there is no need to 



Listen and Learn  227

worry about having multiple versions of a particular spreadsheet that 
is being updated by various librarians.

Since the majority of the reference librarians at Copley rely on the 
online catalog, they find it helpful if they are able to link out quickly to 
the resource they are evaluating. A title can be hyperlinked directly to 
the library online catalog on the spreadsheet. Each tab of the Google 
Sheet can be locked, so only specific librarians that have permis-
sion can modify, add, or remove information from that locked tab. 
For example, if five librarians are working on the same project and 
reviewing the collection in their subject area, they can work on the 
same spreadsheet using their specific locked tab. The only caveat is 
that anyone who has access to the spreadsheet can look at every tab, 
regardless of whether or not they are locked. 

One giant project that was completed recently was the JSTOR recla-
mation project, also known as weeding the print JSTOR journals. 
Copley Library purchased the entire JSTOR Arts & Sciences Collec-
tions late last year and with the renovation around the corner, it was 
the perfect time to take advantage and withdraw print titles that are 
covered through the JSTOR archive. I created a really large Google 
sheet and divided it up by liaison subject areas through locked tabs (12 
liaisons). I extracted information from the ILS along with what we have 
available through JSTOR and I combined it so that liaisons can iden-
tify the overlap. The library faculty collaborated on ensuring faculty 
on campus were aware of this project and reached out to their faculty 
to let them know about this project and what it entails. The library 
was able to weed most of the JSTOR print collection, but there were 
a couple faculty members who were keen on keeping a few titles and 
the library wanted to ensure that faculty know their voices are heard.

Copley Library was also very fortunate to use the GreenGlass soft-
ware that was acquired through the SCELC shared print project Copley 
participates in. GreenGlass ingested the library’s data which included 
all of our monographs, number of checkouts, and other pertinent 
information from the ILS. Librarians are able to pull useful informa-
tion such as:

• Duplicate checks
• If titles or collection of titles are available in HathiTrust’s 

public domain 



228  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

• If titles or collections of titles are available in other libraries 
in California and across the United States and how many are 
actually circulating

This helped liaisons determine whether a book is worth holding 
onto.

We also relied heavily on vendors and publishers for relevant 
information. Many vendors offer a free service where a library 
provides the vendor a list of owned print titles along with their 
ISBNs. The vendors are able to identify titles available for purchase 
as e-collections or separately. They sometimes offer special deals if 
a library is able to reach a certain spending threshold. Additionally, 
libraries will more likely have print and online overlap in their 
collection. Some institutions strongly believe that print shouldn’t be 
weeded without some form of perpetual access due to ILL restrictions 
or resource-sharing limitations, so it is crucial to review publisher 
licenses and contracts whenever possible.

Going with collection adjustment, which in turn is an investiga-
tive approach, helps libraries understand how to start reviewing their 
collection. Finding meaningful data and its purpose will really identify 
the collections’ strengths and weaknesses.

FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

With a large portion of collection remaining off-site after the renova-
tion is complete, there are still some obstacles that Copley Library 
will need to tackle in order to maintain and continue the quest 
for collection adjustment as a best practice. However, the last few 
months pre-renovation taught us that time may not always be on 
our side and there will be concurrent ideas and different interests, 
but the data that is pulled and manipulated will always provide a 
strong argument for efforts made by the library. We plan to continue 
to gather data to support materials that should be brought back 
to campus after the renovation and make a case for material that 
should stay in off-site storage and not be withdrawn. 


