Most of our dear blog readers may have gone away for the summer, but some of you are still here pluggin’ away – and your faithful librarians, as always, are also here, working hard. You may have noticed large groups of us doing mysterious librarian things in the stacks (fancy librarian word for book shelves). What are we up to in our underground fortress? The answer is: we’re doing some deselecting!
Streamers mark books that are being considered for deselection.
Deselection means that we’re evaluating our collection and removing the books and media that aren’t a good fit anymore. As undergrads, you’re more likely to be doing research on current events and contemporary topics. We want our collection to be current, relevant, and useful to you in what you’re working on, so materials that are very old or out-of-date need to be removed. If you do happen to be looking for historical material and are worried about not being able to find it, rest easy – you’ll still be able to find the books we remove in other libraries, or request them from our storage facilities. We’re just reshuffling things so that every book is in its most appropriate place.
A graduate assistant diligently checking book information.
The first step in the process is to identify books that fall outside our desired date range. For this project, that’s anything published in 1980 or before. These books are marked with streamers containing information about their physical condition (are they marked up or damaged?) and their representation in the campus collection as a whole (do we have lots of copies in other libraries? Or does the UGL have the only one?). After the books are marked by the first group of librarians, a second group goes through and decides what needs to go and what should stay, based on the streamer information. The less relevant, redundant or damaged books get moved to more appropriate locations, leaving lots of gappy shelves in the UGL.
Holey shelves, Batman!
What are we gonna do with all this space? Well, obviously, these gaps mean we have more room to put newer and more relevant material – keep an eye on our Pinterest boards (like this one) to see what new stuff we’re adding right now! Or, you could always suggest a purchase. We’re also planning to remove some shelves completely in favor of more seating and tables: we know how hard it is to find a study spot during the midterm//finals rush, especially one that’s near an outlet. Some of the space will also be turned into an audio recording booth as part of our expanding media commons.
In short, lots of exciting things are happening in the lower level. Keep visiting us to see how things are changing, and let us know what you think!
(Also, a short note on hours: the UGL and all campus libraries will be closed for Memorial Day on Monday, May 27th. We’ll go back to our regular summer hours the following day. See you around!)
