Someone, (sorry that I forgot who) replied to the list that one of their criteria for VHS weeding is no circ in the last three years.
While I do not intend to criticize other's criteria, I think there may be an issue with that approach. That is the dwindling access to VHS equipment and user aversion to VHS. If there were no circ for the past 3 years, I would want to examine the circ history prior to that, to be certain that the low use was a factor of content, not format. My criteria was to withdraw titles that had NEVER been circulated after being in the collection for more than 7 years. In that set of @400 titles, the newest VHS was from 2003. There were in total about a dozen titles that were added to the collection 2000 or later. Two years ago I weeded the West campus video collection. I applied mostly the same criteria. But VHS that had not circulated in 5 years were moved to (requestable) storage. In the past 2 years about 115 of those titles have been requested for use, so they are targets for replacement in the collection via DVD or streaming. I am fortunate in that I have the opportunity and space to store rather than discard, and an institutional policy to work in that vein. -deg deg farrelly, Media Librarian Arizona State University Libraries Hayden Library C1H1 P.O. Box 871006 Tempe, Arizona 85287-1006 Phone: 602.332.3103 > VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
