Visit the Medical Library this month and you'll likely see the library team making
a lot of much-needed changes! Here's an inside look at what we're doing with our print
book and journal collections.
While we all love books here, there are many reasons to review print collections and
consider removing older items - a process we are currently undertaking. Some benefits we hope to see from this process include:
- Removing items we no longer want students learning from, such as very out of date, now-inaccurate clinical texts. We want our students to have the best, current materials!
- Freeing up space for current needs, like a unified center for our CARES counselors and more study rooms or other renovations.
- Improving the health of the building via removing the mildew and dust buildup associated with unneeded materials.
Print Books:
Our team of faculty librarians have reviewed the library's print book collections
to identify books that can be removed from the library. Reasons to remove a book include:
- It's no longer accurate or current - for example, a book on vascular surgery from 1979 or a book on "current" genetic research methods from 1973. Books on current drug therapies are another type that go out of date very quickly.
- It's not relevant to the community we serve. For example, books on veterinary medicine don't need to be kept when ETSU does not have a veterinary college.
- It's in poor condition. Many books have been written in, torn, spilled on, or otherwise damaged. The HVAC outage this summer resulted in a lot of books suffering from mildew damage.
- It has not been used. We have a process of looking at data on frequency of book checkouts, in-house use, and use for interlibrary loan, along with when a book was most recently used. This all informs whether our community still needs the book. In some cases we may replace an old print book with a newer online edition.
Keep in mind that we continue to provide online ebook collections - including most major textbooks - via online collections like Clinical Key and AccessMedicine.
Print Journals:
An important thing to remember is that most journals are now published online rather
than in print, and many of these titles have been primarily online since the year
2000 or even earlier. We continue to spend over a million dollars each year on online journal and database
subscriptions for current, relevant research and information. We have a similar process for reviewing print journals for removal:
- Usage, including whether it has been used, how often it was used, and when it was last used. For example, it doesn't make sense to keep 40 feet of shelving for a print journal when it was last used in 1997. Usage data we review includes in-house usage, check-outs, and use for interlibrary loan.
- Language - in general we find that scientific journals in non-English languages are not being used by our community.
- Relevance - We prioritize keeping journals focused on rural, Appalachian, and underserved care, along with primary care disciplines like family medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology - this keeps us focused on Quillen's core mission.
- Local interest - We are also keeping titles like the Southern Medical Journal and Journal of the Tennessee Medical Association, which are of local interest and may not be readily obtained from other sources.
Reminder: for individual articles from print journals we remove, we can always request
those for library users via Interlibrary Loan.
Long story short? Don't be alarmed by seeing print and book removal in the medical library. We're freeing
up space to better serve our library users today and in the future! If you have questions,
don't hesitate to reach out to our library director, Associate Dean Rachel Walden.