Shifting from What to Weed
to What to Keep

Elyse Hill & Pamela Bolan
Seneca College

Session description: Last spring, Seneca Libraries set out to significantly reduce our print collections at all campus libraries in order to make relevant titles more discoverable to users and to focus primarily on providing electronic resources (that can be accessed anytime from anywhere). Seneca’s new complementary print library collections will include only resources that either cannot be acquired electronically or do not serve our users as effectively in electronic formats. 

One year into this massive project, we have: created workflows and timelines for all participating library teams, developed weeding criteria and instructions for selectors, communicated project plans to key stakeholders, identified all items to be removed from the collection (of more than 50,000 print resources), and revised the library’s collection guidelines. Join us to find out more about the considerations, challenges and processes of planning and implementing a major multi-campus weeding project, as well as our next steps. It is hoped that our new complementary print collection will help Seneca’s students and faculty get the most out of our library resources in this new postsecondary reality we find ourselves in – one in which we are back to the library but also far more online than ever imagined pre-pandemic. 

Learning outcomes:
By the end of this session, attendees will...

• Understand the various considerations, challenges, and processes of planning and orchestrating a major multi-campus weeding project

• Be able to analyze and discuss the advantages of prioritizing a primarily electronic-based college library collection