BSL Main Collection Project

Regular users of the Barr Smith Library will have noticed a lot of activity in the stacks, with empty shelves appearing in many areas. You may be wondering what is happening.

We have, since late last year, been engaged in a major project to revitalise the Barr Smith main collection. This involves several steps:

• weeding of redundant undergraduate textbooks;
• removal to store of journals which are available online;
• removal to store of older journal volumes where currency is important.

Our objectives are:

• to make the collection more relevant to the needs of researchers and students, by removing unnecessary material from the main collection;
• thinning the collection to provide better lighting and access;
• reorganising the books into more logical arrangements to avoiding splitting subjects between different parts of the library;
• removing of some shelves to provide more lighting, seating and better wayfinding.

The BSL Main collection has almost 900,000 volumes, almost all of which will need to be moved during this project. We are moving around 12,000 volumes to store each month, and we expect to continue that through to at least the end of this year. The focus so far has been on the “Medical” collection (Dewey 610) in the Basement, but we are now moving into other areas. Overall we expect this project to continue through to the end of 2009.

Items to be removed are identified with a sign. Your cooperation in not taking these items is appreciated.

Please note that no titles are lost or discarded in this process. Any item sent to the store can be retrieved within 24 hours on request.

We apologise for any inconvenience to you during this project, and your understanding is appreciated.