304-306

We are racing along at a snail's pace through the 300's! I am going to have to step this up and streamline.

As stated in my last blog, I am going to leave on the cart everything I am recommending that we keep, since, even though culling the reference area is important, more important is being familiar with what we are keeping. What I am discarding or transferring to circ I am just going to list here. (Also as stated in my last blog, I am rethinking what I am transferring to circ and will be doing a lot less of this.)

Discard: Ref 304.6 Cen/Uni - All the paperbound 1990 Census stuff (8 vols)

Ref 304.6 Fed - Federal Population Census catalog of microfilm copies (4 vols)

Ref 304.6 Mat - Atlas of the 1990 Censes

Ref 304.63 Vit - Vital Statistics of the United States, 1990 (2 vols)

Ref 305.409 Han - Handbook of American Women's History (1990) - (have the 2nd ed)

Ref 305.8 Afr - African-American Almanac, 6th ed. (already deleted from cat; Ju has 7th ed)

Ref 3035.8 Sta - Statistical Record of Black America, 4th ed (based on 1990 census)

Ref 305.8 Who - Who's Who Among Black Americans, 92-94; 94-95 (ordered 2007 ed for $1.98)
Ref 305.8 New - New Jersey African Americans and the 1990 Census

Ref 305.868 His - Hispanic American Almanac, 1993 (ordered 2007 ed for 59 cents)

Ref 305.868 Sta - Statistical Record of Hispanic Americans (based on 1990 census)

Ref 305.8924 Ame - 2004 American Jewish Yearbook (ordered 2007 ed for $5)

N.J. Ref 306.09749 Rut - Images III; A Report on the Quality of Life in NJ, 1985

These are on a cart in my office if you want to look at them.

Reference Inventory - 300's

The 000s, 100s, and 200s were easy, but now we come to the massive 300 area. What we are covering here is the 300-304 area, and boyoboy is there some obscure stuff here.
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The discards and those that I am transferring to circ are clearly marked on the cart. Just some notes:
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The International Library of Afro-American Life and History, although dated in appearence and language, is still very interesting, so Terri and I thought it should go into circ, along with three NJ titles on various aspects of the people of New Jersey.
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Those books I recognized when I saw them, but the International Encyclopedia of Communications from 1989 I must confess I have never used or even seen. Given that, is this something that we should discard? I haven't decided. Let me know what you think.
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Go back to the shelves and see what I have left--all the symbols books, the 5 volume set Encyclopedia of Sociology (2000), the 3 volume set Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace & Conflict (1999), Encyclopedia of Terrorism (2003), and more.
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Remember, the point of this inventory is not only to discard unused items, but also to remind ourselves of what is there. Let me know what you think--I'm open to any suggestions.

Reference 200's Inventory

After going through all of the 200's, there are some books that I think should be discarded and some that should be changed to circ. Each category is labeled on the black book cart. Some exceptions:
The Routledge Dictionary of Religious & Quotations should be recataloged to the quotations reference area.
The Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches was a standing order which I have cancelled, although we will keep the 2009 for the time being.
The Catholic Almanac we cancelled as a standing order in 2006. These older editions should probably be discarded.
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Let me know if you disagree with any of these decisions. Also, let me know if there is anything on the shelves that you think should be discarded. I am open to any and all suggestions.
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Also, take a look at some of the items there that you may have forgotten (or never knew about) such as the wonderful How to be a Perfect Stranger which tells the visitor exactly how to act in any house of worship; the Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, which steers the user to every usage of every word in the Bible; the excellent Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions; the great mythology titles; and Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians.

Reference 100 Review

I have just finished going through the Reference 100 shelf. All my recommendations are in red.

It's a relatively small area that is made up largely of multivolume sets, all of which I think we should keep because they are classics in the field and widely held, although I'm not sure spending the money on the available updates is a wise use of our funds. They are:

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols, 1967 with 1996 suppl; 3770 holdings) - There is an 8 volume 2nd ed which is available for $1162 and was published in 2005 to wide acclaim, but Booklist warned "don't be too quick to retire your first edition..."

Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology (2 vols, 2001; 838 holdings) - Still in print

Encyclopedia of Psychology (Kazdin, 8 vols, 2000; 2324 holdings) - Still in print

Encyclopedia of Psychology (Corsini, 4 vols, 1994; 3631 holdings) - 2001 revision available for $1200

Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (4 vols, 1994; 1445 holdings) - Still in print

Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence (2 vols, 1994; 1422 holdings - no update, no longer in print

Encyclopedia of Ethics (2 vols, 1992; 1797 holdings) - 2001 update available for $820

Encyclopedia of Bioethics (5 vols, 2004; 1624 holdings) - still in print

Single volume works (these are all on the cart):

One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers (2001, 724 holdings)

Encyclopedia of Learning and Memory (1992, 1465 holdings) - no update

Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming (1992, 1680 holdings) - no update

Astrology Encyclopedia (1994, 1593 holdings) - updated with 2nd ed in 2003 which is no longer in print

Oxford Dictionary of Psycyology (2001, 2346 holdings) - 3rd ed, 2009 is available for $18--I recommend that we purchase it.

Mental Measurements Yearbook (13th ed., 1998, 286 holdings) - 18th ed will be out in the fall for about $200. Tests: A Comprehensive Reference for Assessments in Psychology, Education, and Business (4th ed, 1997, 996 holdings) - 6th ed, 2008 is available for $69 - I recommend that we update one of these and discard the other, probably Tests because it is less academic and more accessible to our customers.

Secret Language of Birthdays: Personology Profiles for Each Day of the Year (1994, 1243 holdings) - no update--just a fun book you probably forgot about or didn't even know that we had.

Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (2003) - an extremely academic book that would be better off in circ.

Recommend discard:

Biographical Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1965)

Animals in Research: A Resource Guide (1995)

Let me know what you think. These are just my recommendations; I'm open to anything you have to say.

Editor & Publisher Market Guide

This yearly publication contains a lot of useful information, yet the last three editions, which were still on the shelf when the 2009 edition came in, look untouched. It costs about $170 per year, which, granted, is not a whole lot compared to some of the titles we have reviewed. But think of it as eight $20 bills and a $10--are we throwing this amount away every year?

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The strength of this volume is the large section of market data for US cities that have daily newspapers. This includes, in addition to population and number of households, principal industries, number of banks and amount of deposits, railroads, shopping centers and retail outlets, colleges and universities, names of newspapers and other data. Although much of this information is available on the internet, the convenience here is the collection of these various pieces of information for each city. The sections on Population, Ages and Ethnicity, Housing, Income and Retail sales are more easily found online.

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It also includes Metropolital Statistical Area (MSA) rankings for such things as population, income, cost of living, high school graduation rates. quality of life, retail sales.

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Is this useful enough, and do we get enough requests for this type of information, to justify the price?

Fulltext Sources Online

Fulltext Sources Online is a two volume publication that is updated twice per year (We keep it behind the reference desk). It costs $285 per year.

We just received the new edition, and the July edition, which it replaces, looks untouched by human hands. Whenever I see this, of course, I question whether we should be getting it.

It lists 41,234 publications whose full text can be found in 25 aggregators (like Ebsco, Factiva, JSTOR, Newsbank, etc). It is arranged alphabetically by title of publication, with subject, geographic and language indexes.

Significantly, 36,417 of the entries include URLs, and of these 13,035 contain free archives. This is noted by a special symbol within the entry. Blogs, radio programs, TV transcripts and newsletters are also included and noted as such in the entry as a document type.

Definitely this is a useful resource. But do we get asked for this kind of information enough to justify the price, or do most patrons want to know what we have access to here in the library (which can quickly be answered by our E-Journal magazine list which can be found here http://nc9gr8gh9t.search.serialssolutions.com/ ).

United States Code Annotated (USCA)

I need your opinions quickly on this. The USCA subscription costs us nearly $2500 per year to keep it up to date. It is all online here http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ and here http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/index.html (although I do find the online hard to use). Do we use the paper edition enough to justify the expense?

I have no plans of getting rid of the NJ Statutes or the NJ Administrative Code. I think we should keep these despite being also online.

The WestLaw pricing for this stuff is very complicated. We pay approximately $300 per month for the WestLaw database, which no one ever uses (and probably never will). However, since we subscribe to that, we get all our print subscriptions at half price, which actually nets us some savings. However, if we cut the print USCA, the database will actually start costing us money, which we cannot justify. So, clear as mud? (Told you it was complicated).

Let me know what you think as soon as possible, since we have to make a decision on this by Friday 1/30.