Case Studies
Below are some case studies for why institutions have joined the UK PBC and how it is benefiting them and the wider community.
Please note, that there is no requirement to carry out a stock management exercise as part of the UK PBC, merely to ensure that you keep a monograph when you are one of the last seven libraries in the UK holding it.
University of St Andrews
Why we joined
One of our key strategic goals at St Andrews is Sustainable Stewardship: collections that can grow and change over time without outgrowing the space available. Our estate is finite. We cannot readily extend it, yet we take in more than 10,000 print items every year.
We work to an occupancy target of 85% of capacity. The 15% gives us room to accept a significant donation or transfer, to house material, and to respond to circumstances we have not anticipated. Once shelving is full, that flexibility is gone.
Our occupancy sat above the target, so reaching it meant reducing what we hold, and this is where the strategy became difficult in practice. Low local use is a weak signal on its own. A book borrowed twice in twenty years may be the one a researcher needs, and usage tells us much more about our teaching collections than about the research value of older material. A more reliable test is how widely a title is held elsewhere in the UK.
Until recently no library could apply that test with full confidence. Holdings data shows how many copies exist at a particular moment, but not whether those copies will be retained. The UKPBC resolves this by turning holdings data into commitments. Member libraries undertake to retain copies where the NBK shows seven or fewer held nationally, or, if they cannot, to offer them to a receiving member. As a retaining member, we record those commitments (retention statements) so that other libraries can see and rely on them. We can therefore make decisions knowing that scarce works will be preserved elsewhere in the distributed collection.
What we did
Working from NBK data, we reviewed our holdings entirely. The first phase focused on the clearest case we could identify. This was older textbooks and teaching materials which had been superseded by later editions and had seen no use for many years. The national picture confirmed these as among the most widely held books in the country. From releasing these books, we expect by the end of the year to have freed around 300 linear meters in total, which will bring us close to our Sustainable Stewardship storage target for the first time.
As a retaining member we also undertake to keep the titles where our copy is one of only a small number held anywhere in the UK, and to record that undertaking against the records so other libraries can see and rely on it. Identifying that material and adding those statements is the next phase of our work.
Why we’d recommend joining the UK PBC
Our Sustainable Stewardship strategy rests on being able to distinguish a common copy from a scarce one, and on knowing that scarce copies are being looked after somewhere. Neither is possible for a library working alone. This is why we would recommend membership to any library thinking about the long-term management of its print collections. For us, the UK PBC has been the practical means of meeting a strategic goal we had set but found difficult to deliver.
It has also given our collections an important role beyond St Andrews. The books we hold are now part of a national distributed collection, and what we keep is kept for readers across the UK as well as our own.
Imperial College London
Why we joined
We joined the UK PBC scheme as a retaining member to support the aims of the UKPBC. The UK Research Reserve (UKRR) originated at Imperial, and we want to continue to collaborate on shared print initiatives. Our motives for joining were not related to freeing up space on the shelves.
What we did
We have a new workflow for larger, planned stock edits that follows the UKPBC Stock Assessment process.
We have advised staff who want to weed any titles outside of a planned stock edit to check the title on JISC Discover to see if there are seven or fewer holding libraries. Our systems team create a list of weeding candidates using our local criteria (not borrowed in five years, etc.) and exclude any titles already with commit to retain statements. This list is refined by our subject librarians. This refined list of titles is sent to the metadata team who run the list through the JISC Compare tool. Anything that is held at eight or more institutions is deaccessioned. We then double check the titles held at fewer than eight other institutions using the JISC Discover tool. We keep one copy of everything identified as held at seven or fewer institutions and we deaccession any spare copies.
We add the 583-retention statement in bulk, along with a local tag to make these titles retrievable in the system. We are an Alma institution, so we can also add Commit to retain status at item level. This prevents the item from being deleted unless the status is removed.
Why we’d recommend joining the UK PBC
Prior to joining the UKPBC, we were already making efforts across various teams in the library to retain scarce print materials and now we have a formalised process that is more streamlined and benefits the wider sector.