The joy of shelf scanning

The 200 collection development project continues forthwith– and I have to say, I’ve learned more about various religions than I’ve expected I would. For that, I thank the very good resources I’ve been able to secure as a student, through MOBIUS. Already I’ve made a decent list of suggested resources, for both the casual reader and the more comprehensive needs of the student.

Truth be told, I’ve also found plenty of offensive material in this part of the collection: either things that irritate me personally or that others would consider objectionable. All I can say to the– and to myself– is that I am not here to tell people what to read; they must consider their sources and make their own decisions.

Now, though, begins the process of deselection. I was surprised to find the library’s deselection policy [PDF] to be so vague, though I imagine its vagueness comes in handy for special cases, or as new media presents itself. I’ve been working from a shelf list (courtesy of the lovely and helpful Horizon techs of UCPL), but the only way to know for sure which books are where is to go right into the stacks and check them, one by one. Last week I did nothing but that– my goodness, there were a lot of misfiles, though none of them were old (our shelvers are too good to let misfiled things go for a long period of time). Still, a lot of books were listed as “missing”– that is, checked out and never returned.

Finally, I’ll be back on Saturday, and hopefully I’ll teach a class on Web Email. Of course, GoogleDocs presentations on this subject are probably forthcoming, but I want to look at our handouts for the session before I make anything. If I do, rest assured that it will be posted here.