Amherst College Library

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Brief History of Depository Collections and Current Activities - May 2006

  1. Initial building of the collection
    • Librarians (primarily Head of Reference, Floyd Merritt, and Head of Serials, Paul Trumble) reviewed the stacks for journals fitting the criteria for potential transfer to the AC Depository.
    • Selection criteria specified that journal runs must consist of more than five bound volumes and be published before 1969 (Humanities & Social Sciences) or before 1979 (Sciences).
    • The Librarian's Office compiled title lists in call number order and sent copies to appropriate academic departments with instructions to indicate which titles should not be sent to the AC Depository.
    • Faculty were told that any titles which had back files retained on the main campus would have additional volumes sent to the AC Depository at five year intervals.
    • Responses were compiled by the Head of Serials and these lists were used to identify the titles approved for transfer to the AC Depository.
    • Since additional space was needed in Frost, the decision was made to send all materials classed in 500 and 600 (journals and monographs from Level C).
  2. Creation of the Five College Library Depository
    • In the planning stages for the Five College Library Depository, the Head of Serials generated lists in call number order of every title in the AC Depository.
    • Lists were sent through liaisons to academic departments with an explanation about Five College ownership.
    • Faculty were asked to indicate those titles which could NOT be transferred to the Five College Library Depository.
    • Faculty participation was extremely low.
    • Liaisons also made decisions about what titles would be retained in the AC Depository.
    • Based on these responses, the Head of Serials generated lists of titles to remain in the AC Depository and titles approved for transfer to the Five College Library Depository.
    • The Five College Library Depository librarian is using the approved list of titles to transfer materials from the AC Depository to the Five College Library Depository.
    • Two-thirds of the titles approved for the Five College Library Depository have been transferred as of December 2005.
  3. Materials published prior to 1900
    • After speaking with the Head of Archives and Special Collections, the Head of Serials was asked to identify volumes published prior to 1900.
    • No pre-1900 volumes were sent to the Five College Library Depository.
  4. Gaps in Five College journal runs
    • Occasionally there may be a gap in a Five College journal run that could be completed with volumes from the AC Depository. If the AC Depository title has not been has not been approved for transfer, the Five College Library Depository manager MUST ask if AC would be willing to transfer the volumes to the Five College Library Depository.
    • Of the few requests made so far, permission was denied by the liaison.
  5. Music Library collections in the AC Depository
    • Music was a special project transfer as the Music Library reached 100% capacity in the summer of 2002.
    • Monographs classified in Dewey were reviewed and reclassed; those not reclassed were sent to the AC Depository.
    • All of Music's bound volumes in JSTOR were sent to the AC Depository (2003).
    • The Music Librarian is the only liaison to to have used solely this criteria so far.
  6. On-going transfers
    • For approved titles, additional volumes are transferred to the AC Depository every five years.
    • Casual or existing staff is used to shelve and record shelf location in item records.
    • The 200 boxes of journals that were sent in the summer of 2005 from Science were a five year transfer. The volumes were shelved in two weeks.  Item records were updated with shelf locations by staff in Technical Services over the following weeks from Frost.
  7. Reactive Projects
    • Handled by Technical Services with existing staff.
    • The decision by the College to create offices out of the Math Library forced the Library to send more volumes to the AC Depository and some volumes to Science (2003).
  8. Future
    • The Head of Serials has decided to maintain a list of all journal titles and holdings which AC has in print for which a stable archived online subscription exists.
    • The list is updated weekly.
  9. Circulation
    • With the change of staffing in April 2006 from 20 hours a week to 5, the only tasks are scanning from journals or checkout of monographs.
    • Monographs loaned out do not return but stay in Frost and are reclassed if in Dewey.
    • Monographs selected to be sent to the AC Depository have been classed in Dewey.
    • The most recent transfer was in Spring 2006 when 100-199 was transferred from Level C due to the partial removal of incapacitated compact shelving.


pt/ss May 2006