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BL BUDGETING FOR LIBRARIES
24,3
Free electronic books and weeding
Kirstin Steele
160 Daniel Library, The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina, USA
Received 7 July 2011
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose is to explore using databases of freely available electronic books as part of a
library’s collection.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper considered whether expensive discovery services, an
OCLC product, or an open source product would be practical alternatives to the current labor-intensive
system used.
Findings – An open source product introduced in 2010 called GIST Gift and Deselection Manager
(GDM) appears to fit the author’s needs nearly exactly.
Research limitations/implications – Since earlier Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) workflow
products have a proven track record, the author would expect library students and practitioners to also
experiment with the Gift and Deselection Manager.
Practical implications – All can start using GDM anytime when they are ready, without spending
any money.
Social implications – The paper highlights an open source workflow option.
Originality/value – The paper notes that the Gift and Deselection Manager was released on August
16, 2010, an event of which some library professionals might not be aware.
Keywords Electronic books, E-books, Weeding, Open source, Donations
Paper type Viewpoint
Within the practice of using electronic materials to purchase space is the hope of
getting shelf space for free. I am convinced that a sizable percentage of our library’s
books are out of copyright and included in their entirety online in publicly available
collections. Even if one did not use a book’s free online accessibility as the only reason
to weed a title, such accessibility would make a decision easier. I see the possibility of
job growth in this area, if there is a way to compare the books on our shelves with those
available to the public.
I use Google Books as a tool when one of our older books goes missing or
disintegrates on the shelf. The idea of relying on Google’s copy of Curry’s Civil History
of the Government of the Confederate States rather than paying $22 for a
print-on-demand copy makes perfect sense to me. Downsides are that this process is
currently only serendipitous and obviously time-consuming, and I do not always
remember to check Google Books before ordering a replacement.
OCLC’s WorldCat Collection Analysis is another way to compare our catalog to
other libraries’ catalogs, and, I surmise, to existing collections of freely available
e-books. I can think of additional ways I would love to utilize the Collection Analysis
The Bottom Line: Managing Library product, but it is hard to justify spending four figures on what amounts to a “staff
Finances
Vol. 24 No. 3, 2011
only” subscription.
pp. 160-161 Since our library and its budget are tiny, I have not seriously considered
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0888-045X
Innovative’s Encore, Serials Solution’s Summon, the EBSCO Discovery Service, or any
DOI 10.1108/08880451111185982 other discovery product. I have assumed such a purchase would merely add to the

2. library’s technology maintenance burden and be an additional, ongoing expense. I also Free electronic
have failed to see the products’ value, supposing that big library vendors were just
redecorating link resolvers or federated searching in order to prop up sales. Not
books and
everyone is so cynical, of course. My colleagues are starting to think about these weeding
services and compare them, and of course, highly respectable libraries sign on with
discovery services every day. One feature that has made me reconsider is the ability to
include stable databases of free e-books, and the possibility of using those databases to 161
weed books whose shelf space we could better utilize.
Paying tens of thousands of dollars each year to buy a few thousand feet of shelf
space is, arguably, dubious use of a taxpayer’s dime, but if discovery services offer
other quantifiable benefits, perhaps they are good investments. Many library
professionals have written about the pros and cons of discovery products; I am starting
to believe that saving instruction librarians’ time, improving patron good will, and
expanding use of existing resources will make it possible for a discover service to pay
for itself. My own ability to use a discovery service to weed the collection would simply
be a further advantage.
I imagine being able to run a report by author and title of what is available in full
text in Google Books, the Hathi Trust, and other open access electronic book databases,
and compare the list to what is on the shelf in our library. Ideally, such a report could
be sorted by call number once an overlapping set was created. Like any pointy-haired
manager, I assume the technology exists to make this possible without choking patron
access to any of the databases. Unfortunately, I also assume that what I want is not
high on the list of what a discovery service is designed for.
So I nearly fell out of my chair when I discovered that the GIST Gift & Deselection
Manager (GDM) does almost exactly what I want. While I missed an introductory
program at the November 2010 Charleston Conference, the slides are available at:
www.slideshare.net/kepitcher/gist-gdm-charlestonconference1162010. Tim Bowersox,
Cyril Oberlander, Kate Pitcher, and Mark Sullivan of the State University of New York
(SUNY) at Geneseo developed the open source product to check multiple databases at
the same time. It is intended to streamline gift book workflow and weeding procedures,
and can even be used with ILLiad to help interlibrary loan patrons find free versions of
the materials they are requesting. There are some space caveats (for example, Google
Books permits only 1000 records per day to be processed), I am not positive GDM can
compare multiple book titles at the same time, and the program looks complicated on
screen, but it is designed do to my job.
I look forward to using GDM and to continue pruning our library’s collection. One of
the things I envision using WorldCat Collection Analysis for is scanning publishers’
backlists for low OCLC holdings, to most effectively use our library’s limited book budget
and also give something back to the interlibrary loan community on which our patrons
rely. I am still working on a persuasive argument, since our entire book budget is only
marginally greater than the cost of a Collection Analysis subscription. And, perhaps, I
will leave the whole discovery service question to the public services librarians.
Corresponding author
Kirstin Steele can be contacted at: Kirstin.steele@citadel.edu
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