that’s audio file, not ‘audiophile’: an archives ingestion emergency

I recently got some music at my favorite place, Roadside Records. That is, I found some records waiting for trash pick-up on the side of the road. The pile included over 100 LPs and about forty 45-rpm singles. I recognized a lot of artists from the 1970s and ‘80s.

They were sitting in front of a self-storage place and had apparent water damage, but I stuffed them into the car and brought them home to see if any were worth keeping. Fortunately, my wife was out of town for a few days. I had space to spread out and do triage. I started with the 45s.

These had been stored in a open plastic rack, most with their paper sleeves. After sitting outside, none of the sleeves was stable, so I discarded each as I removed the disk. But because the disks had been well-maintained until going to the curb, all but three were still playable, with most in rather good condition. I threw out the three broken disks, set aside the remaining 35, and moved on to the LPs. I ended up digitizing most of the singles and keeping fourteen of them.

The albums were more of a challenge. While the singles had been stacked, in their rack, on another piece of furniture outside the facility, the large cardboard box of LPs was resting directly on the ground and moisture had seeped through. Several of the albums were ‘protected’, either by their original cellophane wrapper or an aftermarket protective sleeve. And while this layer of exterior protection did help stave off the worst of an overnight out of doors, it ultimately caused much bigger problems.

The first step, then, was to remove the sleeve and retail cellophane and extract the object. Next, I examined the package, hoping the cardboard sleeve was in good shape. If so, I wiped it with a microfiber cloth before removing the next layer. Sometimes, though, water damage caused the cardboard to fall apart in my hands. Even worse, the combination of moisture and sealed environment in their rental storage space had sprouted mold colonies inside many of the record wrappers. A good number had to be discarded immediately, and the damage was so severe between (alphabetically) Pat Benatar and Neil Diamond that nineteen albums were beyond any salvage.

So I’ve set aside or discarded the cover jacket, and now have the disk in hand. It may be in a paper or plastic internal protective sleeve. If so, the sleeve comes off and, unless it is printed original album art, immediately goes in the trash. The mold potential outweighs any protective value. Liner art goes to sit with the jacket, though, for attention later. Now we’re down to the vinyl sound disk.

Now for a quick visual inspection, aided by a microfiber cloth. First, is the album intact? The LPs all were, but one of the singles had been discarded because of cracks. Next, is it clean? Here, the real value of plastic sleeves showed. Album jackets with outer plastic wraps developed mold. Albums with inner plastic sleeves might also develop mold on the cardboard, but if so, the important part - the sound-carrying vinyl - was separated from that mold. Inner plastic sleeves meant clean records. Records with paper sleeves, or loose in the cardboard, came into direct contact with the mold and required additional attention.

Now I’ve got a stack of records that might be playable. The question after ‘can we’ is ‘should we’; this is the fun part. Going through the stack, it’s easy to eliminate records I’ll never want to hear, much less own. A total of 87 albums ended up playable. Most of those, like Greatest Hits from Elton John, The Eagles, and Air Supply, were easy. The music is easy to find, and the records themselves have no historic significance as objects. I guiltily slipped these records back into their sleeves, if those remained intact, and returned them to curb, hoping both that someone else would give the music a home, and that the records would not spread mold if they did find another taker.

My stack of material to process greatly reduced, I confronted my final question: use, or archival? I now had about thirty albums which were at least interesting enough to digitize in part. But while all would need cleaning before that, some might be worth keeping, meaning extra attention for them. I decided to deal with those after ripping the music I wanted to keep from albums I wouldn't and adding those records to my curbside pile.

Cleaning vinyl is a lost art. When records were the best media for music, everyone had supplies for their care. But MP3 files don’t need cleaning, CDs are usually okay without attention, and most of us don’t have purpose-made record care equipment now. While special solutions are available, I checked my textbooks and realized that pure isopropyl alcohol works just fine. Gently using a cotton pad to go around the disk, this removed decades of dust and, in almost every case, any trace of mold from the grooves.

Finally, we’re ready to convert the sound from analog encoding to a digital file, making it much more practical and portable. I use a convenient tool, the Profile Pro USB Turntable with Input. It’s an inexpensive device and the results aren’t great, but it is for a use copy, after all. I make one take, save it as a WAV.file, and import the track into iTunes. I should make more of an effort with the sound quality, but if I want to hear something in its full glory, I’ll put it on the stereo, not my iPod. That’s why I keep some things as archival copies. I digitized well over 250 songs.

But only nine disks from this stack of 115 LPs made it into my physical collection. Some things I thought might be worth hearing, were not. Some that were, weren’t worth keeping. Of the final nine, only four were complete with jackets. Those four were cleaned against mold as well as I could without causing too much additional damage.

This leaves just the cataloging and filing, which we all do differently. Now that it’s over, I’ve learned a few things. Some are mechanical. Plastic sleeves are bad for jackets, but good the the records. Microfiber cloth is great for a quick preliminary cleaning of both jacket and disk, and common isopropyl alcohol works well for cleaning the grooves. Mold really is that much of a threat. Digitization produces better results with more care and attention. This all just confirms in practice what we know in theory.

But I also now understand that archival donations are expensive. Time, both in staff and opportunity costs, is the issue: this project took about three weeks of spare time. The ingestion process, the ‘can we’, ‘should we’, ‘will we’ questions, takes time. Conservation - restoration and preservation - takes time. Processing for use; cataloging, arranging, building finding aids; so much work to describe an item, that others might find and make use of it. Historical significance and uniqueness are important, but so are these two questions: ‘does anyone want to use it’, and ‘can we afford it’. If either of those answers is ‘no’, it might be best to politely decline most material offered for archival donation. But I'll still stop at Roadside Records, every chance I get.

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Marie Kondo, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up Berkeley, Ten Speed Press, 2014.

What gives you joy? That is what you should do, and what you should have. It determines what you should buy. Keeping tidy is easy: eliminate that which does not give you joy (an excellent argument for divorce, as well). Books are among the most difficult items to let go, because they 1) retain function and 2) contain information, giving them long shelf-life. They retain ‘value’, and the potential for joy, very well. But do you love this individual volume enough to keep it forever?

Among more than fifty paperbacks that didn’t make it are Tolkien, Steinbeck, Conrad, Kipling, Freud, Herman Hesse, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry James: cheap classics, most of which can be had from Project Gutenberg if ever wanted again. That leaves only 1200 or so to disappear en route to Kondo’s ideal collection size of between thirty and one hundred volumes.

Yeah, books are hard to let go.

[cross-posted at www.whateverettreads.blogspot.com/]

Prioritzing Assignments

Sometimes librarians, especially if doing the job well, will have more work than time to do it. Here, we mean on-demand work, the research and reference services that are seen as “our jobs”, never mind the long-term projects and daily tasks that actually take most of our time. Those tasks can, and should, be set aside when a patron asks for help.

The problem, of course, is that providing good service creates demand for the service. It’s a nice problem.

Still, when request pile up, we need a way to get started, or the avalanche can become overwhelming. This could be as simple as starting with the question on top of the stack, and when finished with that, starting with the question now on top of the stack. That should, eventually, get to everyone. But it may also miss a tight deadline or leave easy questions unanswered for far too long.

There is a better way.

First, take a moment to consider what makes one request more important to you than another. How do you choose which of two questions to answer first?

I find three factors go into my decisions: the assignment deadline, the requestor’s perceived status, and the anticipated requirements or difficulty of the question. The last of these includes determining what, ultimately, the client needs: is it a fact, a quote, an article or case retrieval, editing assistance, help using a research tool... how complex is the project, and how long will it take to complete?

The deadline is obvious. If a brief is due before close of business, it cannot be left to work on tomorrow. Each project has a different deadline, and those can provide an organizing method. This shouldn't be the only consideration, though. Just because an answer is due sooner doesn't make that the first question you should answer.

Status is a galling factor, since we're supposed to live in an egalitarian society. The fact is, though, librarians are support staff; our clients are the talent, and we're here to make them look good. And some of those clients are more important among their peers than others. We may not agree with it, but we must recognize it and at least consider it when making decisions.

Of course, the time it will take to complete should probably be the main concern. Giving ourselves time to complete a task before it is due can be a real challenge.

Each of these factors is on a sliding scale, from “ignore” to “URGENT”, and the weight given each factor varies, as well. For instance, if a new associate and a senior partner make otherwise identical requests, pleasing the partner is probably a priority. If the partner’s request is difficult while the associate’s will only take a moment, on the other hand, perhaps it is better to deliver the easy win before settling into the more demanding work.

None of this split-second internal calculation is possible, though, without communication. Begin with the reference interview, even if that means responding to an email (it's always preferable to simply respond to an email question with the answer, if possible -- it's just not always possible). This interaction lets the client know you’re on top of the question, provides you detail on what is needed, and lets you set delivery expectations. Managing expectations from the start, by knowing what else is in the queue and where this request falls on that list, helps avoid angry calls later and makes sure all responses are delivered in an appropriate, timely fashion.

Library User Instruction: Course Goals

The textbooks, with their emphasis on integrating activity, writing, and critical thinking into the course, begin to get at what I want to instill in future teachers. And since I have discovered a second listed course in the catalog also focused on information literacy, I can move away from that theme to look at the subject of teaching more broadly. My goals, really, are pretty simple.

First are things I want them to learn. I want them to come to see teaching as an integral aspect of librarianship, regardless of one’s specific role in the library. Reference is teaching. Instruction, obviously, is teaching. But so is cataloging. So is work on the OPAC. Every task in the library is intended to help users fill information needs -- to help them learn something.

Next, I want them to think about what makes instruction effective, considering educational theory, methods, and how these relate to their own teaching. Praxis, the reflective analysis of our own performance, is essential to improving, and a habit best learned early.

The remaining key ideas are about presentation and content, and teachers who plan around these ideas are likely to find success. The concept of learning outcomes is most important: what should the learner be able to do after the lesson? The answer here is essential: it is the entire purpose of the instruction. It guides both choice of material and of presentation methods. If you can’t answer it, just cancel the class. Three ideas that can help determine learning outcomes for a class are 1) what should they remember in ten years? 2) “less is more” --  we can only remember so much new material at once, and 3) that we all learn better when personally interested in the material.

Exposure to this set of ideas would have been a nice start for me, yet none of my education classes bothered to make those simple points.

Then there is what I want them to do, in service of instilling the ideas above. I want them to explore issues that teaching librarians encounter in the workplace, so they will know what sort of problems and controversies they might encounter. I want them to see librarians teaching in various situations and contexts -- not just the one-shot university bibliographic instruction session, but also computer training courses at the public library, historical tours at governmental libraries, reference interactions at special libraries, toddler story-times, and more. Finally, they will practice preparing and delivering material, including lesson planning, course design, and marketing. I want them to walk out of my class feeling ready to walk into their own classrooms.

I want to do all of this in an active-learning environment based on activity and discussion with minimal lecture time, that demonstrates the theories they are studying. These activities should provide realistic scenarios and address components of larger, long-term course assignments.

The assignments, then, are carrying a lot of the instructional value for my class. They require the students to develop practical instruction skills and reflect on their own teaching experiences. The most important of these is to develop an information literacy course, from the ground up, based on The Information Literacy User’s Guide. The assignment is a nod to the inherited emphasis on bibliographic instruction; the exercise is, of course, generalizable. Digesting a text, developing learning goals and instructional plans to deliver the material, evaluating results, and creating an audience are all necessary skills for teachers, no matter their subjects.

Exploring contemporary issues, controversies, and practices in the field, however, requires some sort of research. Previously, this was just an academic research paper, like any other class. That’s pretty boring, though, and of limited real-world use. Next time, we will use a better professional-development assignment: students will prepare a paper (as if) for presentation at the ALA / ACRL conference, following all guidelines for submission. They will then deliver the presentation to the class as a “rehearsal”, and provide one another with performance critiques.

Another part of this exploration is finding, presenting, and discussing relevant research articles for the class -- which also provides more time in front of the class for each student. Another practical exercise, developing a presentation targeting a specific research tool for presentation to a specific course audience (like presenting the JSTOR database to an upper-level humanities class), puts them in front of people yet again.

The final two assignments are intended to further expose the students to practical librarianship responsibilities and expectations. First, they will visit and evaluate at least two different types of library instruction. In most cases, this means visiting a campus bib-info session, then finding a public, government, or special library at which to observe  a different kind of teaching. This leads to a comparative paper, and one hopes, a better understanding of the differences between different types of library. Finally, they undertake a job market analysis in which they look at current openings. Here, the expectation is that seeing what is required for application and what is expected in various positions will allow a head start on finding work after graduation, and that preparing a teaching statement for class will make completing those applications a bit easier.

Finally, I intend to bring in help in making these points. In-class guests provide unique insight, and the students appreciate the opportunity to ask questions of successful professionals. I expect to have at least four: the library’s subject liaison to our school, to both demonstrate an upper-level in-class library session and to discuss what a liaison does; the library’s instruction coordinator, to discuss how the instruction program works, the hiring process, and expectations for new hires; a public or special librarian, to reinforce that teaching doesn’t just happen at university libraries, and a representative from the campus teaching center, to share about the additional opportunities to develop teaching skills they offer.

Review: Nicole Engard, More Library Mashups

Nicole Engard (editor), More Library Mashups. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2015.

This is Engard’s second volume of examples and illustrations of how libraries are using open data sources to provide better information tools and services. Mashups, or combinations of distinct products into something new (like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups), look for ways to use free tools to aggregate, distribute, and increase access to information. Examples in the book range from an automatic weather search triggering a tweet about library closure status to integrating book cover images into the card catalogue, creating computer availability maps, or using drupal to create a library calendar.

The projects aren’t terribly technical. They are meant to show what can be done with available tools, and to inspire further investigation and development by readers. The authors vary, of course, but most chapters are clear and easy to follow. More than any single project, though, these ideas are valuable for developing new ways of thinking about what our users need and how we can help them get and use that.

User-Instruction Textbooks

The syllabus shows two types of reading assignments: textbooks and journal articles. Sure, textbooks provide structure and coherence over the length of a course, while article can delve deeply in specific spots, but there should be more. The readings should also bring forward some over-arching themes for the course.

This is more easily done through the textbooks choices, which makes it worth examining those choices more closely.

The default texts from last year’s syllabus, Transforming Information Literacy Instruction Using Learner-Centered Teaching and Engaging Ideas, give us different approaches to the same goal? each provides a method for moving beyond the lecture and engaging students. And each is a good method; used together, they can almost completely fill a class period.

The underlying theory, that we retain and understand new information better when we do something with it than when we, at most, make notes about what we’re told, seems evidently upon personal reflection. Incorporating increased participation and encouraging critical thinking seem like rational, responsible goals form instructors. And the ideas for individual activities, for group-work or writing assignments, are invaluable. These books are both keepers.

But they don’t explain how to plan a lesson, prepare for a class, or deal with the unexpected. This takes practice.

The Information Literacy User’s Guide is a text book, appropriate for high-school and undergraduate students, covering the basics of ‘information literacy’ as expressed by the Seven Pillars theory. It, like Learner-Centered Teaching, was an explicit nod to the academic instructional librarians for whom the course had been previously designed--but added as a writing assignment, not as a reading. The book, which wasn’t discussed in class, was the assigned text for an information literacy program the students would design. They could draw on it as much or as little as wanted. If they read it, even better. If not, they still had to practice presenting the content to an audience. Goal met.

Still, we’re left with big questions. What is this teaching thing all about, really? What do we (the students) wish to accomplish as (future) teachers? Who are we? Why are we here -- especially given the resistance academic library instruction programs sometimes face from those they’re trying to reach.

This is gist for in-class discussion, but nothing on the syllabus addressed these concerns in a meaningful way. We can discuss why teaching is an important skill, practice the routines of instruction, and consider methods. We should; these are important. We should also find a way to articulate the big questions, though, and begin groping toward answers that will keep our psyches healthy in an demanding and under-paid career. This is where Postman and Weingartner fills a need. It is a call for educational  reform -- from 1969. It states the question that Kaplowitz and Bean both answer, but the question still challenges us. More importantly, Teaching as a Subversive Activity creates an identity for teachers as those who help others ask questions and find answers, which should be a familiar identity for librarians. And forming this self-identity as a teacher, more than anything, is what students should achieve in this class.

John Bean, Engaging Ideas, 2nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Daryl Bullis, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, and Tor Loney, The Information Literacy User's Guide: An Open, OnlineTextbook. New York: SUNY Open Textbooks, 2014.

Joan Kaplowitz, Transforming Information Literacy Instruction using Learner-Centered Teaching. NY: Neal-Schuman, 2012.

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. NY: Delta, 1971.

Library User Instruction

This fall, I was invited to teach a course on Library User Instruction at my wife’s iSchool. This lead to a question: what is library user instruction?

My first thought was that any client interaction is -- not can be or should be, but is -- user instruction, because that library user will learn something from the exchange. What the user learns depends on us. At a bare minimum, she ought learn that we want to help and that we try to help. If we aren’t conscious of this fact, though, what she learns may be that we don’t care, are too busy, or don’t have what she wants.

After an entire semester of readings and discussion, this is still my first thought on user instruction. The user will learn something form every interaction, and we need to make sure that what she learns is positive. That’s not what all the readings were about, though.

Turns out, my class had previously been focused on bibliographic instruction, and specifically the one-time ‘research lesson’ librarians often provide for freshman composition classes. These are, of course, an important example of instruction by librarians, but we also teach in many other situations. The textbooks weren’t going to cover that and it wasn’t baked into the syllabus, but I tried to make the point by discussing examples from my own career and the students’ work experiences. Still, the class was, of necessity, largely about teaching introductory college research sessions.

The problem, really, is that the course only accounted for the needs of academic librarians, and only for some of them. Public librarians and special librarians teach, too--even private firm law librarians sometimes teach. Sometimes teaching happens in front of a classroom. Sometimes, at the reference desk -- or in a fundraising letter to the local tax base. A cataloger is teaching us what each book is about, and saving us the time to read it. Other examples sound even more forced.

Which all circles around to my original point, so I’ll stop. The course focus should expand, and I’ll work on that if invited to teach it again. In the meantime, you can see my reviews of the primary texts, by John Bean and Joan Kapolwitz, on my other blog. Bean’s Engaging Ideas is about using writing to teach critical thinking across the curriculum; Kaplowitz’s about using learner-centered teaching methods in bibliographic instruction. Neil Postman’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity might be a good addition.

In case you missed it...

I have a new job. I am now, temporarily, working at the Library of Congress as a Metadata Technician. What does that mean?

Take a look at the interview linked below.

http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/09/an-interview-with-everett-wiggins-metadata-technician/

This is only a 120-day assignment--the work of reading old laws is tiresome enough that the Library expects, and plans for, burnout. It is, however, a chance to see the Library workings from the inside, and to begin exploring for my place in it.

The Card Catalog

Another version of this column first appeared in the ALLUNY Newsletter: http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/alluny/2014-02summer.pdf

“The catalog doesn’t exist any more.”

I was shocked to hear the librarian, at a public special library, say this, since I was asking how to access location information for print material in their collections.

Of course, she didn’t mean that the library no longer maintains an organized record of holdings—do away with that and the library stops being a library. What she meant was that there is no longer a physical record. The catalog is online now. And this was the problem: accessing collection information required computer access, and computer access was restricted—making it impossible for me to simply find and copy the article I needed. Lesson? There should always be at least one terminal dedicated exclusively to unencumbered catalog access.

It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, hulking cabinets containing cards that described the collection held prominent reign over libraries, and our searches were limited to the title, author, and subject fields. I had a part in the change, too. My first library job, at the public library branch down the street, was transcribing catalog records from those cards for inclusion in a system-wide union catalog on CD-ROM. And I love both the convenience and utility of a good OPAC, which can provide much faster, more targeted results—from my couch—than the old drawers of cards ever did. Still, removing those old cabinets made the library feel a little less magical.

So when I learned that Syracuse University was making the sixty-drawer Gaylord Brothers catalog cabinets from their Science and Technology Library available a few years ago, I jumped at the chance to get one. It has lived in my living room ever since, storing small house-hold items and reminding me of the hard work underlying the magic of what we do, as well as the magic that hard work makes possible.

But my wife and I came to Central New York so she could pursue a Ph.D. Well, she caught it, and has now taken a faculty position at the University of Maryland. We moved to the DC area this summer. Our new space is much smaller and the catalog would not fit, so it has found a new home. I will miss its magical bulk, even though everything it once contained is now available online.

Marketing Practices

Once upon a time, legal publishers made their money by selling books. That all changed when databases became everyone's preferred means of accessing information, but publishers were loath to let go of that print-based income. This sometimes led to innovative marketing techniques among some publishing firms. What follows is my response to an unsolicited delivery from one of these.

Fortunately, I have not seen this sort of nonsense in several years. Let's hope letters like this aren't needed again.

8 June, 2009

Dear Customer Service Department,

Please refer your marketing staff to the following website, which describes the approved vendor practices of the American Association of Law Librarians (which comprises your primary market):

http://www.aallnet.org/about/fair_practice_guide.asp

Principle 3: Fair Dealing. Publishers should engage in fair dealings with their customers.

3.1 Customer consent. Publishers should obtain the customer's consent prior to making a shipment or initiating a transaction, unless such shipment is part of a standing order or subscription to which the customer has previously consented.

3.1 PRACTICE TO AVOID 1: Without prior customer consent, a publisher mass mails a new product to customers who have previously purchased an existing product.

3.1 PRACTICE TO AVOID 2: Without prior customer consent, a publisher ships a free unsolicited newsletter to a customer and then later sends an invoice for the title to the customer.

3.1(a) Where the content of a new product or supplement that is published as part of an existing subscription or standing order bears no direct relationship to the content of the standing order or represents a substantial expansion of the topic or purpose of the original subscription or product, the publisher should seek customer consent prior to shipment.

3.1(a) PRACTICE TO AVOID: Without prior customer consent, the publisher of a subscription service ships to subscribers of the service a pamphlet that includes content that has not previously been supplied as part of the subscription, where that content is not specific or closely related to the topic of the service, and charges customers for the pamphlet.

3.1(b) Where a new product or supplement is published as an addition to more than one existing title or subscription, the publisher should seek customer consent prior to shipment.

We are returning the unsolicited supplement received 5 May 2009 for the following reasons:

1)         Said item is deceptively packaged as part of a series--a subscription service.  Such materials are assumed by the customer to be part of the service for which we have already paid.

2)         Said item does not list a price, anywhere.  In fact, the packing slip--like all other subscription updates--indicates Total: $***** .  This is also deceptive, as the statement 'Invoiced Separately' again echoes other subscription updates--which are, of course, invoiced upon subscription, rather than when the updates are supplied.

3)         Said item is shipped in brown paper.  All documents except the deceptive packing slip described in 2) are packaged INSIDE this brown paper.  These documents, then, instruct that if item is to be returned, it must be shipped in the packaging which was NECESSARILY DESTROYED in locating the documents.  If not deceptive, this is certainly disingenuous.  We are of course ignoring your request to return the item in its original packaging.

While this shipment may not violate the letter of the American Association of Law Librarian's vendor guidelines (though I would argue that it most certainly does), it is clearly an effort to SELL an item for which no real market exists by making it seem like part of a series for which we have already paid, not providing the price of the material, and then making its return more difficult than paying for the unwanted item.

Such vendor practices are entirely unethical.  If one must resort to deception to sell one's wares, one ought leave that business immediately.

Sincerely,

Everett Wiggins

Reference Librarian

Deselection, again

Originally published in ALLUNY Newsletter (39.1),
http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/alluny/2014-01spring.pdf

In my last column, I wrote about the law library as a social space.  Before that was even published, I got word that not only would we not be getting comfortable chairs, we would be moving the library to a much smaller space.  This is a drastic, but reasonable, change for our firm.

A law firm library is unlike other law libraries.  We collect for a specific purpose—to support the practices of our attorneys—rather than in a comprehensive way.  History does matter, but not much: for what isn’t available through our database subscriptions, we rely on others, with more archival missions, to collect.  And finally, we are subject to the profit motive.  This isn’t to suggest that the library is a profit center, but we must be mindful that our space costs money, our books cost money, multiple copies of books costs even more money, and our databases allow for billing back usage costs to clients.

My job as a private law firm librarian is to provide timely access to accurate information in the most convenient, cost-effective way possible.  With multiple offices across several states, that means databases.  They are updated immediately, allow multiple concurrent users, and don’t require multiple copies for each office.

So the management committee has determined that our space can be better utilized as additional offices and conference rooms.  Our new space would be approximately one-third the current arrangement, and this would allow far fewer materials to be shelved.  I needed to begin culling my collection immediately.

Some of the decisions were easy.  Most of the deselected items hadn’t circulated for at least five years, and many hadn’t been updated in that time.  Large sets, like the NYCRR, which 1) cost a lot to maintain, 2) take lots of space, 3) are available for free online, and 4) can never be truly current, were among the first to go—along with shelves and shelves of New York case reporters that were housed in the basement.  Old hornbooks, outdated treatises, and back issues of periodicals were next.  The US Code and FCR, both available from the GPO website, freed another full run of shelves.  Digests, the NY Juror 2d, and a second set of McKinney’s Consolidated Laws also disappeared.  All told, the books we discarded left a stack of circulation cards nearly six inches high.

What did we keep?  Practice materials, mostly. Treatises, formbooks, and specialized case reporters from CCH. Historical material that is otherwise not online, like our Session Laws, Attorney General opinions, and Comptroller opinions collections. Local laws. Titles directly related to our current practice areas, or with particular enduring value. And some not available from our database provider because they’re published by the other vendor.

I am a librarian by trade, and an archivist by nature.  Tossing thousands of dollars into a dumpster is not my idea of fun, but I am better positioned to make these choices than anyone else in the firm.  I  know what materials we have online; I know what materials my attorneys actually use (as opposed to what they SAY they use); I know that keeping dated materials on the shelf so the shelf looks full will tempt one of them to use it without checking its currency, leaving him open to malpractice.  Clearing these shelves is an extinction event: the books are gone, and there is no bringing them back. Our library is now, of necessity, a lean, mean, internet using system, and our attorneys will need to adjust. On a more positive note, though, all that free shelf space has allowed me to start a DVD lending collection—so even in a reduced space, more people have reason to visit the new library.