Back in 2019, the UCSF Library announced that we would be clearing out the first floor bound journal area so that Archives and Special Collections could use that space for a new, much-needed vault. After comparing our journals with the holdings at the other UC campuses and regional storage facilities, all highly duplicated journals were removed in May 2020. Our unique bound journals are now waiting to be shipped to UC’s Northern Regional Library Facility (NRLF). Due to COVID, NRLF has not been able to regularly accept deposits and we needed to identify a temporary space to keep these journal volumes at the Library until NRLF fully reopens so that construction could start on the first floor.
Journal relocation
Because the majority of the books on the fifth floor were outside of the health sciences Library of Congress (LC) call number ranges and were therefore used infrequently, we decided to relocate the journal volumes there. This necessitated a similar de-duplication project for the fifth floor books to make room for the bound journals. After comparing these books with holdings at the other UC campuses and regional storage facilities, all highly duplicated books on the fifth floor were removed in September 2020 and the remaining books were sent to NRLF in May 2021. Our unique bound journals are now shelved temporarily on the fifth floor. Articles and chapters from the journals and monographs that were deaccessioned or relocated to NRLF remain accessible to our users through interlibrary loan (ILL). Once the Library is fully staffed after the pandemic, patrons will be able to request these entire volumes via ILL.
The future of print books
In order to better serve our geographically dispersed users’ needs, the Library is continuing to transition to electronic-preferred holdings by focusing on conducting similar analysis and deaccessioning on the fourth floor books. We are comparing titles with holdings at the other UC campuses and regional storage facilities in order to identify low-use, outdated, and duplicate holdings that can be donated to the Internet Archive for digitization. Eventually, all of our bound journals and the majority of our older, unique books will be sent to NRLF and only highly-used current books will remain at the Library.
Please direct any questions or feedback to Sarah McClung, Head of Collection Development, by February 28, 2022.