Revitalizing a community college library: aggressive weeding’s impact of circulation statistics

Abstract

Purpose

Aggressive weeding in academic libraries is becoming more commonplace as colleges seek to create student-centered environments and space is at a premium. For one community college in the Southwest United States, several factors required the library to proactively weed its collection within three years. At the same time, the library sought to maintain the circulation of its physical books.

Design/methodology/approach

Updating the library’s collection development policy to include robust selection and weeding criteria allowed the library to embark on a revitalization project to remove thousands of outdated or unused items, resulting in a net loss of nearly 32,000 books.

Findings

The loss of more than half of the general collection had an unforeseen consequence – a 70% increase in circulation statistics during the three-year deselection project. The case study's results highlight the need for continual maintenance of academic library collections.

Originality/value

The case study is original and not published elsewhere.

Citation

Becker, K.L. (2024), "Revitalizing a community college library: aggressive weeding’s impact of circulation statistics", Reference Services Review, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 474-485. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-03-2024-0012