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305

Pruning
Lessons The Literature Did Not Teach Me
Oliver Schulz, Technical Services Librarian, Colorado Christian University

ABSTR AC T: This paper presents practical lessons that I learned while 
preparing, conducting, and reviewing a significant pruning project 
at Colorado Christian University (CCU) between 2018 and 2024. I will 
first share some details about CCU and its library collection, provide a 
definition of “pruning,” and then share practical lessons I learned in the 
past few years that I did not see discussed while reviewing publications 
dealing with library pruning. These lessons learned are about how to 
better prepare for such a project, how to formulate evaluation criteria, 
how to use the library’s integrated library system and online public 
access catalog; they also concern workflow, better communication, 
post-project lessons (and potential future plans), and what should not 
be repeated by anybody: foolish lessons.

INTRODUCTION

Collection evaluation and pruning are standard practices among 
libraries. One might wonder how this topic applies more specifically 
to theological libraries and librarians. It is probably fair to say that 
theological librarians and libraries are often reluctant to prune their 
collections for at least two reasons: a) theological resources usually 
have a much longer shelf-life than resources in other subject mat-
ters; and b) theological libraries often lack adequate staffing, which 
discourages large-scale evaluation and pruning projects. This paper 
is borne out of such a context and will give insights into how you 
can complete such a project successfully. 

BACKGROUND OF COLORADO CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Colorado Christian University is a non-denominational evangeli-
cal school that traces its history to the founding of the Denver 
Bible Institute in 1914. Now located in Lakewood, Colorado, CCU 



306    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

has a student FTE of over 7,200 divided between the College of 
Undergraduate Studies (on-campus students), the College of Adults 
and Graduate Studies (primarily online students), and the CCU 
Academy (online dual credit, dual enrollment). 

The Clifton Fowler Library, named after the founder of the Denver 
Bible Institute, has four full-time library faculty (Director of Library 
Services, Instruction & Outreach Librarian, Web Technologies 
Librarian, and Technical Services Librarian), and one and a half 
full-time library staff (Library Service Coordinator, Library Associate). 
As of April 2024, the Library’s collection includes more than 28,000 
physical volumes, 740,000 electronic volumes, 19,000 audio books, 
103,000 audio recordings, and 68,000 video recordings; the audio 
books, audio and video recordings are primarily online resources. 

In 2018, the librarians at CCU made two significant decisions: first, 
we shifted primary funding for resources from print to electronic 
since the majority of CCU’s students are not able to access physical 
resources. Second, the physical collection needed a thorough evalu-
ation because (a) many of these resources were either outdated 
and/or not used, and (b) the building that housed the library would 
sooner or later be torn down and rebuilt. Removing unnecessary 
titles from the collection would reduce the work of moving the collec-
tion to a temporary location and back into the new building. Thus, I 
started preparations for the evaluation of the collections in 2018 and 
continued the project (with interruptions) until the spring of 2024.

DEFINITIONS

The library literature provides several options to describe the removal 
of resources from a collection. Common terms include weeding, 
retiring, deselecting, or deaccessioning. All these terms describe the 
same general practice: resources are moved from a collection of 
the library to (a) a less prominent collection (e.g., from Reference to 
Circulation), (b) to a less prominent location (e.g., to an off-campus 
location), or (c) to be sold, gifted, recycled, or exchanged for another 
resource or credit.

While those may be the most common terms used for removing 
titles from a library collection, deselecting and deaccessioning are 
technical and will not be clear to those outside the library. Retiring is 



Listen and Learn Sessions    307

a good term to describe this kind of project, but most people associate 
retiring with something other than libraries. I believe that weeding 
is a poor choice of words, for it implies that the resource was always 
of inferior quality, which is (hopefully) inaccurate for most titles. 
Further, if one takes the gardening comparison further, one might 
conclude that these poor-quality resources multiply on their own. 
I therefore prefer to speak of pruning the collection. The term, I 
believe, accurately describes the removal of a branch (book) that is 
no longer useful or hinders the growth of the plant (i.e., hinders the 
full usefulness of the collection), while at the same time indicating 
that the branch (book) was once productive and useful.

THE LESSONS LEARNED

It is not the purpose of this article to discuss reasons why librar-
ians do and do not prune, pruning criteria such as MUSTIE, or how 
to plan for such a project. There is an abundance of literature that 
discusses these points at length. Neither will I discuss CCU’s specific 
reasons for evaluating and pruning the collection, since such rea-
sons differ according to context. Instead, this article will discuss the 
lessons I learned preparing, conducting, and completing a pruning 
project—lessons that I had not learned even after consulting more 
than twenty-five resources discussing such projects in preparation 
for this one. 

PROJECT PREPARATION LESSONS
Gather Statistics
Lesson: Gather as many meaningful statistics as possible.
It is important to gather significant statistics about the collection 
before evaluating the first title. Since different libraries may need 
different statistics, it is important to gather detailed information to 
draw meaningful conclusions at the end of the project. For this proj-
ect, I gathered the number of resources in every class and sub-class 
of the Library of Congress Classification schedule. This information 
allowed me to not only have a good overview of the library’s cur-
rent holdings, but by using the same parameters after the project, 
the data allowed me to see which area of the collection was most 
affected by the evaluation. 



308    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Save the Search Queries
Lesson: Save all search queries you use to gather statistics 
at the beginning of the project so you can use identical 
queries at the end of the project.
As with the previous point: conduct the pre- and post-data col-
lection using identical methods and parameters. The integrated 
library system (ILS) for the CCU Library is Sierra, and I made it 
a point to document the search and data export perimeters (in 
our case, a JSON search query) in my documentation. It makes no 
sense to compare data that was collected using different methods, 
for the data will likely reveal changes that make as much sense as 
this example illustrates: “At the beginning of the sale, we had 100 
apples, and at the end of the sale we had 5 pounds of apples left.”
Further, if the pruning project overlaps with a library’s migration to 
a new ILS, it is probably best to run a first pre-project report before 
the evaluation begins, run a first post-project report the day before 
the implementation, run a second pre-project report on the first day 
after the implementation, and a second post-project report once the 
project is completed. This will help secure the integrity of the data.

Make Review of the Project Part of the Project
Lesson: Plan to review the project while it is in progress 
and after it is completed.
A project review can be an invaluable resource for future projects. 
It took me less than a week to realize that I was learning new things 
about the project every day, and I decided to start taking notes 
about what was and what was not going well. This also led me to 
sit down with colleagues to learn what lessons they were learning. 
This, in turn, led to changes in the workflow and clarifications in 
the documentation and instructions. Prior to any project, create a 
dedicated blank document to record lessons you have learned that 
day or week, set up appointments with colleagues one week into the 
project to gain insights, and implement the feedback you receive.

EVALUATION CRITERIA LESSONS
Create Policies for “Special Books”



Listen and Learn Sessions    309

Lesson: Try to think of titles that may need more or less 
attention in the evaluation process. 
One insight I had very quickly was that I had not previously consid-
ered certain titles that were in the library’s collection. The type of 
“special books” will differ from library to library, but for an academic 
library such as CCU’s, I decided that we either keep or prune certain 
series based on their academic quality. For example, I removed titles 
that were part of “Time-Life Books” or “Barnes & Noble” series. 
However, there were other series that were not as easy to decide. I 
ultimately developed the policy to retain those volumes of academic 
series that showed a history of usage while pruning those volumes 
of the same series that showed little to no usage. I made exceptions 
when we had a complete or near complete run of a series. 

I encountered a similar problem with sets. These included Bible 
commentary sets as well as sets such as the Scribner Writers Series. 
When I encountered such sets, I developed the policy to keep all 
volumes if (a) we had a complete or near complete set, and (b) some 
volumes of the set had a history of usage. On the other hand, if the 
set was very incomplete and it was unlikely that CCU would add the 
missing volumes, I pruned those volumes that had not shown usage. 

Create Evaluation Policies Based on Keywords in Title
Lesson: Depending on the type of titles you evaluate, think 
of keywords in titles that may help you accelerate your 
evaluation process.
Within a few months of starting the project, I came across an article 
that helped me in my evaluation process. Arbeeny and Chittenden 
(2014) argued that many titles can be evaluated at high speed by 
merely looking at their titles: any older publications that included 
words such as modern, today, new, contemporary, emergent, or cur-
rent are most likely out of date and can be pruned without much 
additional evaluation. 

WORKFLOW LESSONS

The workflow for this project was likely very similar to projects 
conducted by others: (1) I used the ILS to create various lists of titles 



310    AT L A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

that were to be evaluated and gave those to the student employees; 
(2) the student employees then pulled those books and placed them 
in my office on shelves and book carts; (3) I evaluated the titles and 
decided if a title was to be kept or pruned; (4) I removed all titles 
from the ILS and OCLC holdings while the students reshelved titles 
that we kept; (5) I kept all completed pages of titles that I evaluated 
in my office for record-keeping and to answer potential questions.

Pay Attention to the Pilot Project
Lesson: Conduct a pilot project to identify problems and 
take the time to implement its lessons.
I purposefully created a pilot project that involved all individuals 
involved: the student employees and their supervisor, some col-
leagues, and myself. The pilot project did help me clarify some of 
the instructions I had given in writing to the student employees; 
however, there were other lessons that I did not implement because 
I was too eager to get the project started. So, while I learned many 
lessons, I did not implement enough changes based on those les-
sons. This would cost me time and energy (as some of the following 
points will show).

Anticipate Delays
Lesson: Be liberal in your project timeline in case there are 
unforeseen delays.
At the beginning of the project, I estimated that I could evaluate 
approximately 300 titles every day. As I gathered data from months 
of evaluation, I had completed only about 150 titles per day when I 
actively worked on the project. 

There were several bottlenecks that I had not considered in my 
initial estimation. One was that student employees were sometimes 
not available or were busy with other projects. Computer, internet, 
ILS problems, other responsibilities, and change of locations (most 
of the collection moved to the temporary off-campus location in the 
middle of the project) all further slowed the project’s pace. Evaluating 
a collection carefully takes time, and you should therefore be liberal 
in how much time you plan to take to complete it.



Listen and Learn Sessions    311

Evaluate Using Your Hands
Lesson: Use more than one sense to gauge the value of a 
title you are evaluating.
Usage statistics are one of the most common and important indicators 
of a title’s worth in a library’s collection. When I created the lists of 
titles to be evaluated, I included two indicators: the number of total 
checkouts and the last time a title had been checked in. However, 
there is a real problem evaluating titles purely by looking at statistics 
in a spreadsheet: as I looked at the hundreds of lines of resources, the 
titles and authors start to blur into a mass of letters and numbers. 

Right from the start of the project, I was committed to touching 
every resource I was evaluating. While this slows down the project, 
it allowed me to evaluate each title individually, look at the title 
and author in larger (than the spreadsheet) font, read the author’s 
credentials, the endorsements, investigate if a new edition was 
available, and evaluate the physical condition of the resource. Even 
if the resource appears not to be useful anymore, it once cost the 
institution or a donor money, and it is worth the investment of your 
time to give it a fair and careful evaluation. 

Sort Evaluated Books Systematically
Lesson 1: Create categories for evaluated titles and sort 
them in a way that makes sense (to you).
I found it helpful to evaluate a title and then place it within a certain 
space on my desk and in a certain way. Thus, all titles that I needed 
to scan after the evaluation was completed for the day were placed 
on my desk with the barcode facing up. Titles that would go into 
the library’s book sale were placed horizontally with the barcode 
up and facing away from me. Titles that we shipped to a used book 
vendor were placed vertically with the barcode facing up. Books that 
needed to be reshelved were placed horizontally with the barcode 
down. Books that needed to be checked-in and checked-out again 
(to create usage; more about that below) were placed horizontally 
with the barcode facing up and towards me, etc. Image 1 shows 
how I arranged the books on my desk; note how I placed the books 
and the barcodes. 



312    AT L A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Image 1: Books placed systematically on desk

Lesson 2: Place evaluated titles in places that make it easy on you 
and your back.
Not all books are created equal: some are heavier than others. 
Pruned books no longer needed to be in a certain order, and I there-
fore made it a habit to place the heaviest titles on the top shelf of a 
cart, the shelf that was easiest for me to reach. Image 2 shows that 
all smaller and lighter books are on the bottom two shelves, while 
all heavier books are on the top shelf. This practice does not mean 
that only heavy books go on the top shelf—it means that all heavy 
books are on that easy-to-reach shelf, while smaller books fill out 
the empty space.



Listen and Learn Sessions    313

Image 2: Books placed systematically on cart

Protect Your Shipping Supplies
Lesson 1: Do not let shipping supplies disappear for non-
library business.
For this project, the CCU library used Better World Books (BWB) to 
dispose of all titles that we pruned and did not sell in the library’s 
book sale. BWB provides empty shipping boxes (usually forty at a 
time) and organizes the shipping of those boxes. The problem we 
encountered was that boxes started to disappear; library employees 
used them to move or store both personal and library materials. 
Thus, the project manager should provide clear communication that 
boxes are not to be used for any other purposes (and that they are 



314    AT L A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

not the library’s property). Obviously, the same is true for all other 
shipping supplies as well. 

Lesson 2: Always have enough boxes and other shipping 
supplies at hand.
We quickly made it a habit that when we started the last set of 40 
BWB boxes, we ordered another set, which would take one to two 
weeks to arrive. This way, we always had enough boxes available 
to box up pruned titles. We applied the same principle to other 
supplies such as packing tape, shrink wrap (for preparing pallets 
of boxes), permanent markers, etc. Unless the project nears its end, 
ensure that you always have more than enough supplies at hand. 

Take Regular Breaks from the Project
Lesson: Make sure that you do not evaluate books for an 
entire day without breaks.
I previously mentioned that you should take your time evaluating 
each book by using more than one sense, i.e., do not merely look at 
data on spreadsheets, but touch the physical book. This lesson is not 
merely a reminder of this key point. Rather, you must (purposefully) 
plan for time away from the project. 

There is a real chance that you will catch the bug I call “evaluation-
monotony.” Just as the data on a spreadsheet can easily become 
overwhelming and you cannot see the trees because of the forest, 
looking at 100-plus books without any interruption can easily cause 
you to lose concentration as books start to look alike, which will 
cause you to make errors in your evaluation. Plan ahead and bal-
ance your workday with other (smaller) projects that interrupt the 
evaluation. You might want to walk around the library and check if 
patrons need help, eat lunch, or talk to a colleague for a few minutes 
about this or another project. Every person will work differently 
and will reach the point of evaluation-monotony at different times. 
Knowing yourself and planning ahead can help. 



Listen and Learn Sessions    315

Ensure That the Item Is Clear to Be Withdrawn
Lesson: Check the status of the title before you remove it 
from the collection.
If a title has not seen usage for many years, one can assume that it 
is no longer useful in the eyes of the library’s users. However, that 
assumption is just that … an assumption. Library patrons may not 
have used it because the online public access catalog (OPAC) lists the 
item as lost, checked out, on the repair shelf, out for binding, etc. It 
is possible the student employee pulled the title from the shelf for 
evaluation two days ago, and yesterday a patron placed a hold on 
the title. Before you withdraw the title from the library’s ILS, before 
you delete your holdings record from OCLC, before you cross out the 
barcode, it is imperative that you check the status of the resource to 
ensure that it is clear to be removed from the collection. 

Anticipate Technical, Software, or Power Problems
Lesson: Be prepared when unforeseen problems delay the 
evaluation project. 
First, save your files and records consistently, constantly, and to 
a safe place—your computer’s local hard drive is not a safe place. 
Save those files to a network or to the cloud and do so every time 
you take a short break, go to the bathroom, or eat lunch. Power or 
network outages usually happen at (what we perceive to be) the 
worst possible time. Reduce the risk of losing data and/or reduce 
the amount of data you might lose by backing up relevant informa-
tion and data often. 

ILS LESSONS

Libraries use a variety of integrated library systems, and obviously 
each will have its strengths and weaknesses. It is up to the librarian 
to learn which weaknesses to bypass or overcome. At the time of 
this project, the CCU Library was using III Sierra. 



316    AT L A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Determine the Data Needed for Good Record-Keeping
Lesson: Before beginning the project, ensure that you know 
all the data you wish to collect to produce records of 
your pruning.
I like keeping detailed records. I find comfort in the fact that I know 
which titles I have added or removed at what point of time and for 
what reasons. As librarians, we are responsible for justifying our 
decisions to our funding agencies, and data can make that task easier.

When I started the project, I included the following data in my 
record-keeping of pruned titles:

• Date Pruned
• Title of Work
• Author(s) or Editor(s) 
• ISBN or ISSN
• Publication Date 
• Call Number 
• Internal Note
• Status (if title was considered lost, checked out, etc.)
• Date of Last Check-in
• Total Number of Checkouts
• Barcode

As I progressed, I also included the OCLC number/BIBID in my records. 

Produce Clean Data of Pruned Titles
Lesson: Use the Pilot Project to investigate and overcome 
any data export problems of your ILS.
I consistently encountered problems exporting data from Sierra 
into a spreadsheet. While advanced users may have solutions, I 
was never able to overcome the fact that data spilled into multiple 
columns, thus creating cleanup work for me. This was particularly 
true for the title column, which (see image 3) spilled data into the 
next one or two columns. I should have noticed this problem during 
the Pilot Project, and I should have tried to find ways to solve this 
problem prior to beginning the main part of the project. Since the 
title caused the most problems, I could have (and ultimately did) 
shift the order of the exports so that the title information was in the 



Listen and Learn Sessions    317

final column. This allowed for much cleaner data in the rest of the 
spreadsheet. I could then re-arrange the title data into the desirable 
column without causing additional work.

Image 3: Screenshot of Data Export

Lesson: You will come across titles you think are still 
valuable to the collection, i.e., titles that should receive 
a “second chance.” In those situations, you can check-out 
and check-in the title to create artificial circulation, i.e., 
the title is protected from being pruned in the next few 
years.
Even though usage statistics should never be the sole data point for 
collection management decisions, usage remains a key data point 
in library evaluations. Sometimes patrons may not have used a 
resource for years, and yet the title is still a standard in its field or is 
still helpful in some circumstances. In many cases, such titles should 
remain in the collection for a few more years to give them another 
opportunity to be used by library patrons. I created an artificial 
circulation by checking the title out to myself and immediately back 
in. The purpose of this was to remove the title from evaluation lists 
for the next few years without protecting it for an indefinite period, 
i.e., if the title does not receive additional usage in the future, we 
will likely prune it during a future collection evaluation.

Create Note Fields in Item Records
Lesson: If your ILS allows, you should create notes in 
the item records that inform future evaluation/pruning 
efforts.
The CCU Library has a longstanding tradition of adding notes to item 
records to identify titles that were requested by CCU professors or 
administrators. I have a template for that note, which includes the 
faculty member’s name and school. At any future evaluation, the 
note will help librarians gain valuable information why the title 



318    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

was added in the first place and will likely delay its removal if the 
professor is still at the university. 

Other notes may be equally helpful. Librarians evaluating the 
collection in the future can gain good insight if the item record 
indicates that the title is a “classic” in the field, or if librarians add 
a note that the title should remain in the collection until a certain 
year (e.g., “Do not prune until 2030.”).

OPAC LESSONS: FIND SHORTCUTS WHENEVER POSSIBLE

There are many different OPAC/discovery systems available to 
libraries, and each will have its own strengths and weaknesses. 
Librarians must learn to use any strengths to their advantage and 
alleviate any weaknesses to the best of their abilities. CCU uses Pika 
(www.ccu.edu/library), a system based on VuFind. 

Lesson: Evaluate your workflow to see if shortcuts are available via 
the OPAC, browser, etc.

My workflow included scanning every item’s barcode. Most of 
the time, I also clicked on the hyperlink of every subject heading to 
investigate our other holdings in the title’s subject area. Over time, 
I realized that I could significantly increase the speed of evaluation 
by implementing three minor changes: 

First, I would not click on a subject hyperlink and wait for a new 
page to load. Instead, I would open a new tab (“Open Link in New 
Tab” in Mozilla Firefox), so that I could click on additional subject 
links while this and other tabs were loading.

Second, I realized that instead of right-clicking on the hyperlink 
link with the mouse button and then using another mouse-click on 
“Open Link in New Tab,” I could mouse right-click on the subject 
hyperlink and then use the “T” key on the keyboard (underlined 
and highlighted in the Image 4) to execute the same command to 
“Open Link in New Tab.” While Chrome does not have this open, 
Firefox does!

http://www.ccu.edu/library


Listen and Learn Sessions    319

Image 4: Screenshot of Open New Tab (Firefox)

Third, after I had opened the tabs for the title’s subject(s), I had to 
scroll to the top of the page to access those tabs. I made it a habit to 
select/highlight barcode in the search field when I reached the top of 
the page and then investigate the recently opened tabs. Once I closed 
the additional tabs, the search field would already be selected, i.e., 
all I had to do is scan the next book’s barcode into the search field. 

Image 5: Screenshot of highlighted barcode for next scan 

The key is to look for and implement these kinds of shortcuts as 
they are available in your context and fit them into your workflow. 

COMMUNICATION LESSONS
Look and Ask for Treasures
Lesson: If you need something, ask (the right people) for it.
We have all heard the saying, “One person’s trash is another person’s 
treasure.” The CCU librarians decided to ship pruned titles to BWB 
on pallets. However, the only place we could find them was behind 
the cafeteria. So, I went to the director of the cafeteria and asked if 



320    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

I could periodically take one or two. He was delighted to get rid of 
them. All it took was to ask the right person the right question. Ask 
for those “treasures;” the worst thing that can happen is that your 
request is denied.

Be the Squeaky Wheel
Lesson: If you need something and the initial answer was 
not the one you needed, keep asking.
Since the CCU’s evaluation process took approximately six years, 
it is not surprising that things changed. The most notable change 
was that most books were moved to an off-campus facility. This one 
change entailed a lot of smaller changes: there were fewer book 
carts to place/store books on; student employees were usually not 
available; and there was no internet connection at the facility.

One way to respond to these changes was to just give up and 
call the project “completed.” However, when there is a will, there 
usually is a way. Our initial request to install internet access was 
denied because it would take too much time to get it installed. For 
many months, I used my cell phone’s hotspot to connect to both our 
ILS and OPAC, which was problematic on most days. After repeated 
attempts, CCU’s IT department finally installed internet. My argument 
was quite simple: “I cannot do my work properly without proper 
internet access.” If it is a reasonable work-related request, do not 
give up; keep asking … i.e., squeaking.

Keep Stakeholders Informed 
Lesson: Communication must not be a one-time deal; keep 
people informed as the project progresses.
It may be true that librarians often complete projects without anyone 
outside of the library noticing their efforts. However, when evaluating 
and pruning a collection, people tend to start paying attention. It is 
therefore important to keep the administration, faculty, colleagues, 
staff, students, and other stakeholders informed about the project 
before you start it. 

Remember that communication channels can break down easily. 
In the case of CCU, the Dean of the Library informed the administra-
tion and other deans about the upcoming project; the deans were 



Listen and Learn Sessions    321

supposed to inform their respective faculty. This, however, did not 
always happen, and some faculty needed additional information. 
On the one hand, I was thrilled for faculty to come to my office and 
ask good questions; on the other hand, I was disappointed that some 
faculty more or less openly accused me of weakening the collection. 
Librarians have a responsibility to properly inform their library’s 
stakeholders. Different libraries may find different channels to com-
municate; some may find a weekly or monthly newsletter useful; 
others may design a LibGuide or a Google Doc/Google Sheet, etc.

Patiently Instruct Those Who Work with You

Lesson: Supply clear instructions and be willing to revise 
them to provide even greater clarity.
No librarian would purposefully provide unclear instructions to their 
colleagues or student employees. However, just because instruc-
tions seem clear to me does not mean that they are clear to others. 
Amazingly, my “perfect” instructions left room for many types of 
errors. Student employees regularly did not place books in proper 
order, slowing down the evaluation process. (It is easier to evaluate 
one hundred books on C.S. Lewis if I evaluate them one after another 
than having to evaluate them one at a time spread throughout thou-
sands of other titles.) They also placed the books in several ways 
on the shelves: correctly with the spine facing out, but also upside 
down or the spine facing the wall. BWB boxes disappeared from the 
library, and those the student employees boxed with library books 
were often not filled well. Some student employees were not aware 
that this was an ongoing project and returned to their regular duties 
after a few weeks.

Besides updating the written instructions for everybody, I started 
to have one-on-one meetings with colleagues and student employ-
ees. This was not always easy since my schedule did not overlap 
with all of them. Again, the Pilot Project should have revealed these 
weaknesses. However, there are additional solutions: librarians can 
communicate with individuals they usually do not see via a Wiki, 
Google Doc, or LibGuide.



32 2    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Signage
Lessons: Make your signs clear—crystal clear!
Within a week or two, I realized that my initial signs for student 
employees were not clear. One initial sign read, “Pulled from 
Circulation for Evaluation” (see image 6). However, this left stu-
dents without any instructions as to which book cart or shelf was 
in what order—they pulled the books, placed them on a book cart, 
then pulled more books and placed them on a different cart. 

Image 6: First Evaluation sign

Thus, I revised the signs to provide numerical order to the “book 
madness.” This way, students knew where to place books first, second, 
third, etc. (see image 7), and it allowed me to evaluate books in the 
order that they had been pulled from the shelves. 

Image 7: Second Evaluation sign

However, a little bit later it became clear that the signs were 
still not clear enough because students did not always pay close 
attention to the numbers on the signs—apart from a number and 
two small letters, they all looked the same. I therefore added some 
color to the sign, coloring first yellow, second blue, etc. (see image 
8). From then on, the books were usually in order, which allowed 
me to work more efficiently.



Listen and Learn Sessions    323

Image 8: Third Evaluation sign

However, my “sign woes” were far from over. Images 9 and 
10 show two quite different signs: the only similarities are a few 
words and two lines of text. Image 9 clearly indicates books that we 
needed to box for BWB, while image 10 instructs student employees 
to reshelve those books. 

Image 9: Box sign: Original



324    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Image 10: Reshelve sign: Original

It turns out that these signs needed color—lots of color, and 
color that truly communicated the difference. I ended up coloring 
all “Re-shelve” signs in green and all “Box for BWB” signs red (see 
image 11) to minimize the possibility of errors.

Image 11: Box and Reshelve signs: Revised



Listen and Learn Sessions    325

Signs need to be clear, and they need to be crystal clear. Whatever 
we as project managers do, we must make sure that those individuals 
who work with us receive the clearest instructions possible. If our 
instructions and signage are not clear, we cannot blame anybody 
but ourselves if others make mistakes. Make the signs clear, place 
them where people can clearly see them, and place them in a way 
that does not foster confusion. Image 12 shows a book cart filled 
with books and what appears to be crystal clear signs. Well, they 
are clear if you are standing, and you are looking down onto the 
book cart. But imagine sitting on a chair: the angle is different, and 
it is much harder to see those signs. It so happened that one of the 
best student employees I ever had the pleasure of working with 
encountered such a cart and boxed all the books for BWB. The lesson 
is clear (pun intended): avoid confusion to the best of your ability. 

Image 12: Box and Reshelve signs (on cart)

Keep Documentation Updated
Lesson: As the project progresses and you make changes 
to the workflow, make sure you keep all instructions and 
procedure documentation updated. 
It is easy to become so involved in a project that you forget to keep 
documentation current. A minor change here and an added step 



326    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

there will quickly cause confusion if the documentation is not cur-
rent. Clear communication should not merely happen once but 
needs to be regular. Duplicate any changes in verbal instructions 
in written documentation. 

POST-PROJECT LESSONS/FUTURE PLANS
Vendors to Consider
Lesson: Always investigate options for evaluation projects.
We used Better World Books as a vendor for all titles that we removed 
from the collection and did not sell in our library book sale. BWB 
does require libraries to send books regularly to keep their account 
active, but we were otherwise happy with them. 

There are services such as OCLC’s Sustainable Collection Services/
Greenglass that might be useful for some libraries. I also investigated 
www.DiscoverBooks.com. 

Continuous Evaluation
Lesson: Collection management involves continuous 
evaluation of the collection.
A library’s collection is never “done.” Books get published daily, and 
libraries add new titles that fit their collection management policy 
on a regular basis. At the same time, titles grow old and out of date, 
and librarians need to evaluate the collection regularly to remove 
titles that have served their purpose and at the same time discover 
weak spots in the collection. I have developed an evaluation sched-
ule that requires me to evaluate certain sections of the Library of 
Congress Classifications every year, which means that the whole 
collection is evaluated once every five years. 

Evaluate Your Evaluation
Lesson: Evaluate your evaluation judgment by tracking 
interlibrary loan and purchase requests against the titles 
you pruned.
At the end of an evaluation project, if you have kept good records, 
you should have a lengthy list of titles you have pruned from the 

http://www.DiscoverBooks.com


Listen and Learn Sessions    327

collection. Over the next one, three, five, or ten years, you can now 
compare that list to titles that your patrons request for purchase or 
through interlibrary loan (Ash 1963). How many titles have been 
requested that you previously pruned? If the number is low, you 
have evidence that your project was a success. 

THE FOOL’S LESSONS

We all make mistakes. However, there are some of us who may stand 
as a warning beacon for others not to make the same (or similar) 
mistakes. Consider this final portion of this paper such a beacon. 

Be Careful with That “Delete” Button
Lesson: If there is no “undo,” be careful hitting that 
“delete” button too hastily.
Throughout the project, I often came across duplicate copies of titles. 
In many cases, I kept one copy in the collection, but pruned all addi-
tional copies. At the beginning of the project, I did not differentiate 
between all copies vs. some copies of a title. What was the result? 
No matter if I retained a copy of a title or not, I (initially) deleted 
all OCLC holdings … no matter if I had withdrawn all or merely 
duplicated copies from the ILS. In other words: in the initial stages 
of the project, I removed OCLC holdings for titles that were still in 
our collection. Once I discovered that mistake, I created a new space 
on my desk and ensured that I did not withdraw the OCLC holdings 
of titles of which we retained a copy. 

Save Document Version 1, Save Version 2, Save Version 3, etc.
Lesson: If you make significant changes to a document, save 
it first, and then save the new document as new version.
One of the frustrations with spreadsheets is that they do not neces-
sarily understand how to place Library of Congress call numbers in 
correct order. This causes frustration among those individuals who 
pull books from the collection and walk back and forth between 
shelves because BS 4 is listed on the spreadsheet between BS 3900 
and BS 4100 (using imaginary call numbers). I attempted to allevi-
ate this problem by removing the periods (“.”) in the call numbers. 



328    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

This caused more problems than it solved. For example: after the 
modification, BS 1171.2 appeared as BS 11712 on the spreadsheet, 
which the student employees now had to decipher: besides BS 1117.2 
the call number could potentially also be BS 117.12. To my horror, 
I had made the change without saving the spreadsheet with a new 
name, and I had made the change the previous day. This meant that 
the original list of titles, as imperfect as it was, was now lost. Thus, 
before you make significant changes, save the file with a new file 
name, make the changes, and then evaluate if the changes had some 
unforeseen negative side-effects before proceeding.

Work Hard to Find Ways to Work Smart.
Lesson: Look for shortcuts yourself, but more importantly: 
reach out to colleagues to find ways to work more 
efficiently.
Some may interpret asking for help as a sign of weakness; others 
may see it as a sign of inexperience. However, librarians are known 
to cooperate, and I have yet to meet a librarian who is not willing 
to share tricks of the trade to make another librarian’s life easier. 

For more than a year, I followed these steps to add a title to a 
list of items that I would then withdraw (Sierra uses the Create List 
function):

• I scanned the barcode of the title and waited for 
about two seconds for Sierra to respond.

• I clicked on “View Item Record” and waited for 
about two seconds for Sierra to respond.

• I clicked on “Add to List” and waited for about three 
seconds for Sierra to respond.

• I clicked on “Add Another Item” and waited for 
about three seconds for Sierra to respond.

• I repeated the process, sometimes 100 times a day!

One day I met with a colleague who had much more experience 
working with Sierra, and he showed me a Sierra search query (JSON) 
that would allow me to add as many barcodes as I wanted to a list. 
From beginning to end, the process took approximately two minutes 
to complete; compare that to ten seconds of waiting for each title! 



Listen and Learn Sessions    329

If you are a Sierra user and wish to know how you can use the 
JSON to add barcodes to a Create List, please scan the QR code of 
Image 13.

Image 13: QR Code: Sierra Create List

The lesson is simple: ask colleagues near and far for help, for 
shortcuts, for tips and tricks of the trade. There is no need to work 
harder if there are ways to work smarter.

CONCLUSION

The evaluation and pruning project at Colorado Christian University 
was a success: in six years, we removed more than 30,000 titles that 
had seen little to no usage, and their removal did not weaken the 
collection in a meaningful way. The pruning eased the collection’s 
move into a temporary location. Three years later, an even smaller 
collection will move back onto the campus, making that move cheaper 
and less complicated. 

Evaluating and pruning a collection may not be popular among 
librarians and library stakeholders, but it is necessary for provid-
ing library patrons with the best resources. One key to a successful 
project is to conduct it correctly, and I hope that this paper has given 
you insights into the negative lessons to avoid and the positive ones 
you can implement. 

REFERENCES

Arbeeny, Pamela, and Lloyd Chittenden. 2014. “An Ugly Weed: 
Innovative Deselection to Address a Shelf Space Crisis. Journal 
of Library Innovation 5 (1): 78–90. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=35ca7d67994adcd535ca6
658ecc6679b34afa04b

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=35ca7d67994adcd535ca6658ecc6679b34afa04b
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=35ca7d67994adcd535ca6658ecc6679b34afa04b
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=35ca7d67994adcd535ca6658ecc6679b34afa04b


330    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Ash, Lee. 1963. Yale’s Selective Book Retirement Program: Report of 
a Three-Year Project Directed by John H. Ottemiller, Associate 
University Librarian, under a Grant from the Council on Library 
Resources, Inc. Hamden: Archon Books. Retrieved from https://
catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001163847

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001163847
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001163847

