Physical Space and Retired Books

The bane of my existence as a law librarian is finding space for new books.  If you’re not familiar with legal resources, here’s what you really need to know: they’re updated all the time.  I mean, all the time.  The updates for books vary in type.   

Some of the more common types of updates include:

 Cumulative supplements (usually “pocket-parts” for the back inside cover of the book);

•  Replacement pages (resource is housed in a “binder” with easily replaced pages);
• Updated books (literally books – they send you new books to replace the old ones); and
• Supplemental books (could be Volume 1A, to be housed with Volume 1, for example).

And it’s not just books.  Like any library, there are also journals, newspapers, magazines, and directories.  My personal least favorite is the newsletters; nothing against newsletters in general.  I’m sure they’re quite lovely when you’re not trying to figure out where you can store them so people can see what they are.

Updates for the resources tend to run in predictable cycles: weekly, monthly, quarterly, twice a year, annually, and bi-annually.  Because most of these updates are treated as subscriptions, they appear without warning and are invoiced separately.   Once you have received the update is when the fun really begins…deciding what to keep and where to put it.

Maybe it seems like a no-brainer.  You have an update, you can get rid of the old one, right?  Well, sometimes that’s right.  Sometimes it’s not.  Attorneys may need to refer back to specific points from older versions, especially since cases don’t run on the resources’ update schedules.  The way I have handled this is by creating a “Retired Book” Shelf.  As the updates take their place in the stacks, the displaced, out-of-date resources are brought to their retirement home.  I pencil in the date on a label on the spine, and they have 1 year from that point for attorneys to refer back to them or let me know that they need to be kept longer.

Other resources, such as newsletters and journals, I check to see if we have access to archived versions online.  If we do, I try not to keep more than a year's worth on hand.  When we don't have archived volumes online, the attorneys need to step in and help me determine if the information covered is still relevant.  Due to the always-changing nature of law, storing journals from several years back is inefficient since the information has to be cross-referenced with more current issues anyway.

Of course, retiring books and only trying to weed out out-of-date journals and newsletters does not fix the issue of needing more physical space.  As much as possible, I have been electing to purchase electronic resources for the library.  Some are simply not available electronically, or the primary attorneys who use them may prefer to use physical copies.  So, it is a work in progress – but in a fun way, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle.