The library on the Missouri campus started a major print book weeding project in January 2014. Our plan is to move about 50-60 % of the collection of 23,644 print books to make room for access to older journals presently stored off-site at the Burdman Building facility in Kirksville. Our goal is to help our interlibrary loan department to make fewer off campus trips to retrieve articles from older journal that are requested daily by borrowing research libraries and faculty.
The library goal is to complete the weeding project before students return to campus in the fall.
Daryl Shafer, Acquisitions and David Owens, Public Services Manager are assisting by pulling books off of the shelves for evaluation. They moved the Osteopathic collection to the first floor near the OMM tables where students practice their manipulation skills. All the anatomy models were inspected, repaired and moved to a more visible area on first floor. We have also embarked on weeding the older media slides and videos which were no longer being utilized by students or faculty. Daryl Shafer is removing bib records of items from the LANCE catalog and OCLC database. Mary Sims, Technical Services Librarian trained Daryl Shafer and supervises the record removal process. Jean Sidwell is considering how to dispose of withdrawn books by looking into Selling to Better World Books. Better World Books offers a no cost program to help academic libraries manage their discarded and donated books. It helps libraries make the most of discarded books by selling them on one of 53 channels and sharing the proceeds. Some withdrawn books were put on a “free books cart” for students to peruse and keep for their personal use.