Weeding books is a scary prospect for many librarians and faculty, particularly for humanities faculty, since monographs are critical scholarship in those disciplines. At this library, a renovation in one area created the need for a large-scale review of monograph collections in other areas. Library leadership began conversations with campus stakeholders early on, emphasizing renovation needs and outcomes, careful deselection methods, stakeholder opportunities for input, and sustainable collections. In the Fall 2017 semester, all subject librarians began identifying relevant titles for deselection and communicating with departments about the process. The Humanities librarians found themselves making additional collection considerations and working more closely with those departments to assure faculty that the deselection process would not unduly compromise the quality of the existing collections.

This session described the steps taken to cultivate and engage the campus in a large-scale monograph deselection project, with special attention to the humanities disciplines. Attendees were asked to imagine how they would approach their own weeding projects and how they might communicate the need for such a project. Attendees learned how to apply collection evaluation tools to humanities collections and determine relevant strategies and communication methods in order to convey value.