FS and FTC progress

Two students working in the larger “General Reference” unit of the library have been diligent at typing up lists. Student N. and C. have typed up the a good chunk of the Federal Security agency books and all of the the Federal Trade Commission books. I’ve discarded 177 of the FTC documents. That’s equivalent to about four shelves (12 linear feet). It was roughly three hours of typing. I need to do better job of keeping track of staff hours devoted to these lists. My time is a wash, because I’m here in the library forever or connecting through the VPN at home anyway, but, the student hours are another story completely. I’ve had more consistent help from the students being paid than the community volunteer students. Volunteer student M. didn’t show again for her scheduled time.

Heard back from Admin on the staging issues–where to put the discard lists, what to put them on. The big news: I can wheel up to three carts into one of the associate dean’s offices. [Strange.] New carts were ordered yesterday.  Older wooden carts will be available soon. Kind of anti-climatic.

Off to make more collection decisions.

Onward and upward.

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More discard lists

Volunteer Student M. finished discard list of Health Education and Welfare of 100 volumes. That list was posted today. She began working on a new list from Federal Trade Commission. A big, full chart.

I sent a query out to Admin asking about staging area for these discard books. No word on carts or empty shelving to put the lists as they wait for their six week wait. No word yet back.

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Map of Docs Shelves Finished!

Today Student Volunteer K. finished the excel map of the documents shelves on the main floor of the library. Each three-feet documents shelf is represented by an excel cell that has been labeled with the beginning of the SuDoc class stem. With this map complete I can now begin to compare the space of documents against the use data I have dating back to 2000. After just a brief review of my use data against the map I can see some obvious collection decisions that can be made. Though the Federal Security Agency consists of 30 shelves, the bulk of the use is for the Office of Bulletin titles rather than the Public Health Service. I wish all decisions were so easy.

The HEs are going to be a real pain. Health and Human Services versus Health, Education and Welfare is going to take a while to sort through.

On the less pleasant side of the reorganization I sent out the Index of Patents discard list. This clears five shelves.  This is a drop in the bucket compared to the 100 shelves I need to move out.

Volunteer Student M. didn’t show up today (again). Maybe tomorrow.

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Big and Little Volumes

Volunteer Student M. continued to type discard lists for the WTIC Commerce publications from the 1950s through 1960s. This series is crazy because it has maybe 50-80 separate titles bound into a book about 2-inches thick. It’s a lot of work to discard these books.

I took an easier route. I began typing a list of Patent and Trademark reference books from 1970 through 1997. Individual volumes can sometimes have a binding 4 inches thick. I quickly typed up 64 volumes in five minutes that remove about five shelves from the stacks. The difference between a big and little volume. Sigh.

Clearly, I should concentrate on removing the big books from the collection, but I can’t bring myself to look at size as a criteria for collection withdrawal.

Volunteer Student K. couldn’t make it in today. Such is life and depending on volunteers.

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