Stock Revision

Regular stock revision is necessary to ensure that stock is relevant, up-to-date and, where possible, physically in good condition.

Faculty Librarians have overall responsibility for stock revision in their subjects. Particular care is taken in areas where the Dewey classification scheme brings together material purchased for different courses for which different members of Library and Faculty staff are responsible.

The last copy of a book may be moved to temporary reserve storage to monitor demand, but the major criteria for withdrawal will be evidence that a loanable item has not been borrowed for 5 years and verification that content is no longer current.

Items in poor physical condition will be removed and a decision will be made to replace or dispose of them.

Old editions will be disposed of unless the Faculty Librarian has reason to believe that they will still be relevant.

Treatment of withdrawn material will vary according to circumstance and will include sale, donation and disposal.

Reserve Stock

This collection will contain the University Library’s ‘last copy’ of a book, if it is deemed necessary to continue to monitor usage. It may be necessary to retain earlier editions of a text where there are chapter variations between editions.

If books are requested from the collection, items will normally be returned to the open shelves. If requestors are external borrowers, librarians may wish to consider whether the loan status should be changed.

Individual items from serials collections should not be returned to the open shelves. Serials should be considered as a sequence; it may be appropriate, for instance, to move the more current numbers back into stock.

Reserve Stock items will normally be withdrawn after 5 years. Subject differences regarding weeding criteria will be accounted for in the policies for stock on the open shelves. Where Faculty Librarians decide that an item should remain in the collection beyond this time, date labels should be signed and dated and items reviewed after a further 5 years. Such special exceptions should be kept to a minimum and might include the following:

Items not available elsewhere in the UK, as identified by checking COPAC. These should be offered to other libraries who may make better use of them
Items may be financially valuable, as identified by checking AbeBooks. These should be transferred to the Rare Books Collection, space permitting, or offered to other libraries if they do not meet our selection criteria
Where discussions in the Faculty suggest that a particular topic may be reintroduced to the curriculum
University of Portsmouth publications, deemed necessary to be retained, which are not held at the British Library, should be scanned for the Institutional Repository.