Librarians often call the rows of shelves in a library “stacks”. Before the age of books, libraries had no shelves. Clay tablets were arranged in stacks by size and date. Scrolls were also stacked up as neatly as possible, according to an organization system that made sense to the keeper of the scrolls. In ancient times, libraries only existed for kings and religious figures. Sometimes such libraries existed as huge warehouses of plundered materials from the collections of conquered nations. To display their newfound wealth and wisdom, primitive kings would demand that their booty was stacked up to the ceiling.

According to the 2012 Learning Resources & Services Annual Report, the Miller Center Library holds

570,318 circulating print books (including 27,331 Juvenile titles)

   19,349 films (VHS and DVDs)

   15,396 EBooks

Our physical materials are neatly shelved and catalogued. Access points to our EBooks exist in multiple spaces. Librarians have come a long way from piling clay tablets in stacks. At the same time, accrediting bodies have historically measured the value of academic libraries by the number of volumes they contained in “the stacks”.

The older the library collection, the more likely it is to have “filler” in the stacks. As the Collection Management Librarian, I work with my SCSU colleagues to weed filler and obsolete materials so that library shelves do not become smelly walk-ins that Gordon Ramsay uncovers in “Kitchen Nightmares”. I walk around the stacks and ask myself:

Are we serving what our customers want?

Are our resources “fresh”?

Are our resources easily accessible to all?

Do the resources that we have in the collection meet accreditation standards for the variety of academic programs at SCSU?

Do the resources that we have in the collection meet our own collection development guidelines?

Are the resources that we have in the library even legal?

What sort of input should faculty and students have on collection development?

The answers to these questions change every day.  Hopefully the information posted on this blog can help us get there.