Doria Grimes - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Special Libraries Association
Physics, Astronomy, Mathematics Division
Gardening Tips for Painless Collection Weeding

Overhead #1

I am dating myself, but this quote is very true. Although Jesse Shera authored the above, it is a paraphrase of a statement by Mark Twain.

The NOAA Central Library is the headquarters library of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration located in Silver Spring, MD. The agency was formed in 1970 and is a composite of several predecessor agencies - such as the U.S. Weather Bureau (originally part of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture), the former U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, the former U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the former U.S. Environmental Sciences Services Administration, among others.

So what is the scope of NOAA? NOAA deals with information from sea level to the bottom of the ocean, all the way around the coasts, and from sea level up to the stratosphere. Once it hits the stratosphere, it becomes NASA�s problem. So NOAA has the National Weather Service in its organization. If we proceed from the coast landward, it is the domain of the U.S. Dept of the Interior. Fresh water scientific information and habitats belong to the U.S. Dept. of the Interior; salt water and related creatures such as the whales, porpoises, ocean turtles, etc. are the domain of NOAA. Estuaries - where salt water and fresh water mix - is jointly discussed by NOAA and Dept. of the Interior. This is a lot of the earth to cover and a lot of scientific information in its library system.

Overhead #2

http://www.noaa.gov

This is an overhead of the NOAA Home Page. One the left hand corner you will see a reference to the NOAA Central Library. How many of your libraries are recognized by your organization and are on its main page? This is a new Home page and is the result of several years of educating NOAA management re the importance on the library in the information dissemination functions of NOAA. The number of hits into the library�s Home Page had increased ten-fold since this new Home Page was made available.

Also, please note the reference to NOAA Photos. They are also under the responsibility of the NOAA Central Library.

Overhead #3

http://www.lib.noaa.gov

This is a transparency of the NOAA Central Library Home Page. We are the headquarters library of a system with regional libraries in Miami and Seattle. The item "NOAA Library Catalog (NOAALINC)" is the electronic link to a web-based online public access catalog (OPAC) with twenty-eight NOAA libraries nationwide contributing to it.

Overhead #4

COLLECTIONS AT THE NOAA CENTRAL LIBRARY

1. Main Collection in Library of Congress Classification

All the books are bar-coded and available for loan. There are about 250,000 of these.

2. Reference Collection

3. Journal Collection

Over 700,000 items make up this area, the largest one in the library.

4. Micro-image Collection

5. Government Documents Collection

6. Photo Collection

7. Audiovisual Collection - over 400 videos

8. Map Collection

9. Legal Collection

10. Indexes and Abstracts

11. Old Meteorological Collections

12. Old Climatology Collection

13. Former Coast and Geodetic Survey Collection

14. Oversized Collection

15. The Special Collection - Rare Books

As stated earlier, when NOAA was formed, it was a composite of a number of former government agencies. Thus, the NOAA Central Library began with a core of separate collections. The goal is to have one unified collection in one classification scheme - not a novel concept. For example, we have the original U.S. Weather Bureau Collections that were not originally maintained in a consistent classification scheme. We have M�s, M:, M(, M 08.1's etc. Each successive "librarian" and I use the term very loosely, started a new system. None are interfiled. Every day, as time permits, the staff is reclassifying and merging collections while, at the same time, keeping current with the new scientific publications coming in.

So you see items, 11 (Old Meteorology Collections), 12 (Old Climatology Collection), are being added into the Main Collection in LC order and will be made available on the Internet. We have approximately 250,000 of these to go. Also, there is much duplication within these collections that need to be dealt with.

So what does this have to do with weeding? Is it not logical that we deselect (and I love that term that Sara previously used) when we merge collections? Well, yes, but there were two criteria

For space reasons, the entire staff wanted to deselect. The NOAA Central Library�s collections, when it was located in Rockville, MD, were overflowing. We had temporary overflow shelves everywhere. We had books on top of books, on top of the canopies, on the floors several books deep.

For political reasons, the library director (and very wise so in hindsight) told us NOT to weed. KEEP THE SHELVES FULL. The library will be moving in 1993 to new space. By keeping the shelves full, the space planners (who wouldn�t know a essential item from ephemera) looked at the overflow and assigned more space for the library.

SO IT WORKED! We moved to larger space - almost twice the size of the former library. It is harder to justify to space planners the need for growth - when you are moving into very expensive new rental space.

We moved over 1,000,000 items to Silver Spring over a two week period in twelve-hour shifts. The books were moved in crates the width of a shelf and in order. They were placed back on new shelving in the same order. Steve, my staff person and Collections Development Librarian, was hired and planned for the move. He was only off by 4 shelves.

So now I will turn the podium over to Steve who will describe the current "weeding" projects now that we are in a new library and have plenty of space.

END

This document is at http://homepage.interaccess.com/~sarat/pamweed/Grimesla.html