Deselection Deep Dive: San Diego State’s Journal Review Story

Written with Wil Weston (Head of Collection Development & Resources Sharing Librarian, San Diego State University)

Setting the Stage

What are the specifics of your project? Why are you deselecting / reviewing your journal holdings? 

In 2012, San Diego State University underwent a major serials review process which was completed in 2015. At the time, they needed space, but there was also an organizational issue with the print collection that made the serials difficult to use. The print collection was previously divided into two floors, on the first floor were current periodicals and bound journals back to 1984, and the rest, 1983 back, were on the fifth floor, so the goal was to consolidate journals onto one floor. 

What’s the climate at your campus when it comes to deselection? 

Leading up to the project, SDSU had already been engaged in FILL (or flipped ILL) which views ILL as a driver for collections acquisition. As a result of this SDSU had been living with access and networked libraries as the model for a while so SDSU had reciprocal agreements with other nearby libraries to look at when making acquisitions decisions, across both local systems and the consortial CSU system. Additionally, SDSU was accustomed to using OCLC to see if books are owned by libraries they were in reciprocal relationships with when considering collection development (especially if the libraries are local). And were using this same process to consider deselection of other materials. So within SDSU there was already a culture of conscious deselection.

How are you employing WEST or shared print more generally in your journal review project?

SDSU brought WEST and JSTOR in early on as a responsible way to consolidate their print serials collection and created a resource to explain the work with WEST and JSTOR and how it fit with this project: https://serials.sdsu.edu/cataloging/regional-storage-contributions/. This became a launching point for discussions with colleagues within the library about what was happening with the journal collection.

Outcome

How did WEST or shared print help you with your project? 

Many of the collection, ILL, resource sharing, and shared print issues are connected. WEST’s strength is its ability to look at these things in a holistic sense. No library now has the budget to buy all things it could possibly need and no library can predict the future. Shared print networks help libraries keep collections immediately relevant. These kinds of strategic deselection projects are possible because we are part of these organizations that organize the responsibility for ongoing ownership and management.

Have you reclaimed space? Other resources? 

Even though our original motivation was space saving, we see our library as a point in a network and WEST is a big piece of that. The deselection project has made SDSU a more significant access node in the network. Furthermore, 

How are you using your reclaimed resources? 

With the space that was reclaimed the library was able to provide more space for several key collections, like special collections, the Chicanx Collection, the Comics Corner (or Sword Comics Reading Space) and the Marsh Science Fiction Collection and Reading Room. They are specifically pleased with the expansion of the Chicanx collection as the Chicanx collection increased their space by 10 fold and is one of the most popular spaces in the library. The entire space got a significant refresh as well and the Latinx resource center was able to move into the space, which continues to be a great synergy.

What would you say to others going through this kind of deselection or review project? 

Deselection is part of the collection management process and this can be really difficult to communicate to stakeholders. Librarians are natural systems thinkers and see access connections, but it can be tricky to show that to others less involved in this work. However, there’s inherent support within the profession because we’re all oriented around making sure people get access to the information that they need.

What’s next?

This year, SDSU will be launching another overlap project to try and make the best use of space and address significant overlap between physical and digital collections. For this new project they are hoping to leverage WEST’s expanded collection.