About the Deaccessioning Project
What is this all about?
UCF’s 21st Century Library renovation project — which began in 2011 and is ongoing — includes several transformations intended to benefit students, including the addition of nearly 1,600 in-demand seats. To continue to meet demand and to best serve the needs of our students, we are in the process of removing materials that no longer meet our selection and retention criteria. This is standard practice for public and academic libraries as we work to accommodate the needs and uses of our communities.
Deaccessioning in the Hitt Library
What is deaccessioning?
Deaccessioning is a necessary part of any library, museum, or historical organization’s collecting plan. It enables institutions to refine their collections and use the physical space and resources for materials that best serve their mission and the needs of their audience. Materials from collections are essentially removed because they are old or damaged, have never been used, there are multiple copies at other institutions that we can borrow from, there are online copies, and many other reasons. The term “weeding” is another term for removing parts of the collection and libraries do this regularly.
To be clear, materials that are actively being used for research, teaching, and learning are not being removed.
What happens to the deaccessioned books and print periodicals?
Books and print periodicals not meeting retention criteria will be removed from the library in compliance with UCF policy and state statutes.
What happens to the deaccessioned government documents?
Federal and state government documents will be transferred to other libraries and/or removed according to federal and state regulations.
What is the timeline for the deaccessioning and moving materials?
The estimated timeline for both the deaccessioning and moving of the collection in preparation for construction commencement is October 2023 through April 2024. Construction on the 4th floor begins May 2024.
Deaccessioning is a routine operation and will continue well beyond April 2024.
Retaining Materials in the Hitt Library
How does the library determine what physical materials to select and retain?
The library follows these general selection and retention guidelines when purchasing materials:
- Support research, teaching, and learning
- Considered canon
- Emergent research areas and disciplinary trends
- Authored by faculty and alumni
- High demand
- Are Likely to receive sustained use
- Are about UCF History
- Cover the history and culture of central Florida
For more details on the UCF Libraries Collection Policies and Guiding Principles, see the following pages:
What materials are being retained from the 4th Floor?
All materials being retained on the 4th floor will be relocated to the Automated Retrieval Center (ARC) and the 1st and 2nd floors.
What about Humanities books?
In addition to the selection and retention guidelines mentioned above, arts and humanities books are recognized as highly important to their disciplines, and so are difficult to assess quickly. At this time, arts and humanities books are not part of the larger deaccession project currently underway.
What about print journals?
In addition to the selection and retention guidelines mentioned above, print journals that cannot be replaced with a digital version are being retained.
What about STEM books?
In addition to the selection and retention guidelines mentioned above, STEM books being retained are ones that are currently in demand, were acquired within the last ten years, and that cannot be replaced with a digital version.
What materials are being retained from the 1st Floor?
Selected federal and state documents from the past five years, and materials currently used in research, teaching, and learning.
Need materials to support research, teaching, and learning?
UCF Libraries support the research, teaching, and learning of the UCF community with over 250,000 e-books, 70,000 online periodicals, and 500 databases.
It is best to work with your subject librarian to ensure the library has materials you need to support your research, teaching, and learning needs. You can also use the interlibrary loan service to request items not available in our collection and we will get them from another library for you. You also can make purchase recommendations using our materials recommendation program.
Questions?
Questions about the renovation or the deaccessioning of materials can go to Beau Case, Dean of Libraries.