Condition Considerations: An Inquiry Into Recording Conditions in Consortial Collections for the Purpose of Selecting (and Deselecting) Shared Print Copies

Following preliminary discussions about a shared print network among Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) institutions in which he determined that artifactual condition would not be a criterion for retention, the author developed an online survey instrument for the purposes of verification. The survey was utilized in a condition survey of mutually held book copies at eight SCELC institutions. More than 3,400 book copies were examined. Findings indicated that although the majority of books are in “good enough” condition for a shared print network, because just 1/3 of the copies have paratextual elements, it is probable that random deselection of books would result in deaccessioning “duplicates” with artifactual value. Why I’m Here and What I’m Doing People who know my library is not actually one of the SCELC institutions that expressed even a mild interest in shared print and therefore not one of the pilot cohort involved in the first round of collection and use analysis have asked me what a librarian from Whittier College is doing on our consortium’s Shared Print Working Group, anyway. I think the main reason SCELC Shared Print Chair Bob Kieft asked me to participate is because in the informal online and in‐person discussions about shared print that led up to the formation of our working group, I raised a point I thought important enough to repeat on several occasions. I first broached this subject in an October 2012 listserv posting wherein Bob sought advice from resource sharing network participants regarding his institution’s (Occidental College’s) large‐scale deaccessioning plans: I wonder if anyone knows offhand if, in discussions about recent deaccessioning procedures and/or resource sharing (especially in regards to shared print book repositories), practitioners have given consideration to the potential artifactual value of the printed books in our general collections? . . . [I]f in going forward, just one or two . . . copies [of a given edition] are going to be part of our shared print repositories, won’t we want to make certain that the copies we retain . . . are the most complete documents we can find? Since in many ways the impetus for our consortium’s shared print efforts can be traced back to that 2012 message to which I was replying, in one sense paying attention to the condition and completeness of shared print copies has been part of conversations about a potential shared print agreement from the first. And since in response to my reply more than a few member librarians said that in thinking about a consortium‐ level shared print agreement they favored a policy whereby “best copies” would be identified and retained for sharing, I became our Shared Print Working Group’s representative condition person. Of course, simultaneous to expressing a desire to retain best copies, colleagues were also quick to identify significant obstacles to considering book conditions for the purposes of retention and deselection. Karen Schneider of Holy Names University zeroed in on one of the main impediments to using condition as a criterion for shared print, writing “I agree with ‘best copy’ [but] am thinking that we have at best very limited tools for this (versus online bookselling where noting condition of copies is routine).” Meanwhile, consultant Lizanne Payne expressed others’ legitimate concern that developing tools to assess and record condition beyond a simple kind of yes/no validation, and then deploying such tools, would likely be too time‐consuming, and too costly an undertaking, for the purposes of shared print. (K. Schneider and L. Payne, personal communications, October 2012). Copyright of this contribution remains in the name of the author(s). http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315571 Collection Development 231 At the same time I was thinking about how we might use condition as a measure by which to identify copies to share, I became eligible for a summer research sabbatical that would allow me to test on a small scale the feasibility of the kind of condition analysis I was proposing. In short, my project was to define the physical attributes condition validation would include, but also to undertake the more difficult tasks of developing the procedures by which condition would be assessed and recorded and then actually to put these procedures into practice by assessing the condition of mutually held copies at several SCELC member libraries.