Materials Deselection Policy:
General Policy:
The vitality and relevance of the NGL’s collections depend, upon continuous collection development and careful collection management. An important part of collection maintenance is the deselection (withdrawal) of materials that no longer support SHSU’s mission or the goals of the library’s collections.
The process of deselecting materials requires as much care as the process of selection. It is important to view deselection within the broader context of the library's mission and collection development policy. Subject selectors should evaluate the collections regularly, deselecting items in order to make space available for new, relevant works and replacing outdated materials.
Materials may be deselected for the following reasons:
- Titles outside the collecting scope of library
- The title is no longer relevant to current curricular or research needs and is therefore not within the scope of the Libraries' current collection development policies
- Obsolescence
- The title contains information that is obsolete, out-of-date, invalid, inaccurate, or incomplete.
- Infrequent use
- The title is not used by current faculty and students.
- Redundancy
- The title is a duplicate copy and there is no demonstrable demand for multiple copies of the item.
- The title has been superseded by subsequent edition(s).
- The title can be obtained elsewhere at similar or lower cost than the cost of maintaining it in the collection.
- The title contains information found elsewhere in the collection.
- Physical Condition
- Materials may be deselected due to poor physical condition. Deteriorating books are evaluated for preservation and withdrawn if necessary. Replacement copies are purchased as appropriate and available.
- Electronic Resources decomposition.
Deselection Frequency:
- Singly Purchased Units (Monographs, Films, Maps, etc.) - Individual Subject Selectors should examine the singly purchased materials in their assigned subject collections annually, deselecting materials as guided by deselection policy, and opening up space for new materials. Selectors need to use reasonable judgment in making their selections.
- Continuing Resources (Individual Subscriptions) - Individual serial subscriptions in all formats will be reviewed annually.
- Continuing Resource Packages & Databases - Serial packages and databases will be reviewed annually.
For practices and procedures to deselect various formats of resources, please see individual entries in the Collection Development Libguide.
