Proposal for a Revised Storage Selection Model (SUMMARY)

Proposal for a Revised Storage Selection Model (SUMMARY) Woodruff Library Stack Tower April 30, 2013

Background: The Woodruff Stack Tower is facing a critical lack of space. Our footprint for physical collections on the Clifton Road campus is fixed and will not increase. At the same time we continue to ingest significant amounts of print (60,000 volumes added in FY11). Furthermore, the cost for maintaining physical volumes on campus is significantly higher than in an off-site high-density storage facility.

Monograph – one book Annual Cost Stack tower – on site collection $4.26 per book High density storage $0.86 per book (Courant and Nielsen, CLIR Report 147, p. 102)

Strategy: To accommodate the growth of physical collections, the library will need to systematically identify books and serials that are infrequently accessed and transfer them to off-site storage

Proposal: Library leadership has presented to the Library Policy Committee (October, 2012) on a set of criteria for identifying items for transfer to off-site storage. This proposal is guided by three goals:  Prioritize the use of the Woodruff Stack Tower for books and journals that are essential for key subject areas  Sustain a continuous workflow of items to storage  Maintain acceptable density levels in all floors of the stack tower.

How we will proceed: Titles will be transferred based on the criteria listed below. Titles that are moved to storage will be posted on the library’s website for a period of time for post-transfer review.

 The following criteria will be used to determine which monographs will be transferred to off-site storage:

 Items with publications dates more than 35 years old (less at the discretion of the subject librarian) and not acquired within the last 10 years, with no circulations or in-house use since 2003. Note: Items before 1970 have already been reviewed and transferred; this would extend the date range to 1978.

Exceptions will be made for:

 Items or selected call number ranges designated by faculty or graduate students to remain in the stacks, even if they would otherwise meet the criteria listed above.

 Special consideration will be given to Reference resources, particularly multi-volume resources, which may be difficult to access or use once in Storage. The following criteria will be used to determine which reference items will be transferred to off-site storage.

 In-house use and sufficient, comparable electronic availability will be considered before moving reference items to Storage. Per Stacks guidelines, requested sets of reference items may be returned for use.  The library will commit to keeping multi-volume sets (a discrete work in parts) together in one location.

 The following criteria will be used to determine which serials will be transferred to off-site storage:

 If electronic access is available and archival access is assured.  Back issues older than three years for current print subscriptions

Enhancements to Primo and other services: These enhancements will be implemented to mitigate the effect of sending materials to storage, and to facilitate the discovery and use of collections that are in storage.  Browse shelf feature in DiscoverE: Title, author and call number browsing will be made available as part of a Primo upgrade scheduled for release in 2013.  Table of contents (TOC) addition to DiscoverE: Currently, TOC’s for new acquisitions are added to records when readily available. The library will be subscribing to a service that expands the number of records with TOC’s.  Universal storage delivery: In January 2013, the Emory Libraries adopted a policy so that items in off-site storage can be delivered to the user's preferred library, rather than solely to the library that owns the item.