Supporting the Hidden Work: OSS Projects for Inventory and Weeding
How can library technology teams help their stacks management colleagues in the vital tasks they do to keep the print collection relevant and available to patrons? Without an efficient shelf-reading / inventory process, we’re ignorant of lost, uncataloged or miscataloged items and can mislead students, faculty and visiting researchers. And without an efficient weeding process, we force endless reshelving and run out of space for relevant collection building. Ignoring improvements in these areas puts extra burden on staff who do the underappreciated and often hidden work of our libraries.
Lehigh University recently built and shared as OSS two tools to make these processes easier.
- A weeding tool that aggregates data from local and cloud sources about the usage and uniqueness of each item, to aid selectors in deciding what to remove or preserve, and to assist technical services staff with the resulting workflows.
- A shelf-reading tool to efficiently inventory the collection for present, missing and damaged items, even in stacks without a good internet connection, supporting workflows to reshelve, repair and replace as needed.
I’ll discuss the collaboration with colleagues, our successes and failures, and next steps to improve both tools.