The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

X. Housing 167
that are meant. However, as noted earlier in this chapter, there is
some evidence that the likelihood of future use may be predicted with
a reasonable degree of accuracy on the basis of the date of last recorded
circulation. For the purposes of calculating the costs and
potential savings of this alternative, then, it was assumed that works
which had not circulated within the last 12 years would be discarded
when there was no longer sufficient space to house them in existing
campus facilities. Using the statistics on circulation history gathered
from each campus, and the data on existing space available, the number
of volumes that would be weeded under this alternative was projected to
the year 1987/88, and is shown in Table 31. By the end of the 10-year
period, as indicated, a total of 5,758,000 volumes would have been
discarded.
The costs of the weeding process itself include identifying materials
in the appropriate categories and changing the bibliographic
records to reflect the fact that the library no longer owns them.
For the purposes of the model, these costs are estimated at $1.00 per
volume, and the cost of the weeding process is therefore $5,758,000.
Some additional campus construction would have to take place during
the next 10 years to house those items that do not fall into the categories
to be weeded, and the cost of this construction must therefore
be added to the cost of this alternative. The total cost of the
weeding alternative over the 10-year period is thus estimated at
$44,558,000, a savings over the "base case" of $44,842,000.
At this point, however, a second serious problem with the weeding
alternative must be considered. Any method of selecting or
discarding materials that is purely automatic--i.e., that does not
allow for the exercise of judgment--runs a serious risk that important
errors will be made. A famous case in point arose from a seemingly
sensible dictum laid down by Sir Thomas Bodley when he
established the famous Bodleian Library at Oxford in 1611: that when
"better editions" of a work appeared, the earlier editions should "be
clean made away, as being wholly superfluous." Unfortunately, the
Bodleian Librarian, in following this regulation to the letter, disposed
of the Shakespeare First Folio when the library acquired the