Weeding the printed collections in libraries: Policy and practice at IIT Delhi

Library Herald Year : 2018, Volume : 56, Issue : 2 First page : ( 255) Last page : ( 263) Print ISSN : 0024-2292. Online ISSN : 0976-2469. Weeding the printed collections in libraries: Policy and practice at IIT Delhi

Khanchandani Vanita1, Dr Hasan Nabi2 1Assistant Librarian, Central Library, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi-110016, India. E-mail: vanita@library.iitd.ac.in 2Librarian, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi-110016. E-mail: nabihasan@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper is a case study of policy and practice followed at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi for weeding the old/damaged/obsolete/unused library collections. The paper endeavors to highlight the barriers and the need of weeding in the library. It discusses the criteria used to weed the collections in the central library of IIT Delhi as devised by the Advisory Committee for Library (ACL). The study is limited to the weeding of books from Humanities and Social Sciences, Text Book and Book Bank sections of the Central Library, IIT Delhi. The weeding procedure at IIT Delhi not only makes the collections lively but also helps in marketing of the Central Library and its resources. This study will be very fruitful for those library professionals who wish to undertake weeding of their collections to make them lively and updated.

Keywords Weeding, Library Collection, Advisory Committee for Library (ACL), Collection Management, Collection Development, IIT Delhi.