Smart Shifting for Less Maintenance

Abstract

Planning for growth is an important part of managing print collections, and reallocating space by shifting materials is a necessary, but laborious, task. The literature suggests that growth space is determined at the level of LC class in most academic library shifting projects. Within a music library collection, however, growth rates can vary widely within a single subclass (M, ML or MT). This poster explains how to plan a collection shift in a more granular way, segmenting it by call number ranges and tying growth space to recent acquisition patterns. By doing so, libraries can make best use of the available space and the need for future shifting can be minimized. The spreadsheet excerpted in the poster is used for the final calculations.