In the spring of 2019, the Montana State University Library embarked on a large scale inventory project that involved weeding and moving portions of our collection to an offsite storage facility all in the name of creating much needed space for our constituents – all within six months! Our poster session will include the astonishing details of how we accomplished this. At the session, we will also outline how we advocated to our administration for extra help; how our newly merged Cataloging and Collection Development departments worked together to pull this off; the importance of having a project manager; working with an outside professional service; the types of work groups formed to identify new workflows and modify existing ones (i.e. how our collections would move between the Library and offsite storage !); our departments’ use of student workers and our collaborations with other library departments; how we communicated to our patrons in the library and beyond; and how the move and newly renovated spaces impacted our patrons. Additionally, we will share some interesting figures: how many books we weeded; the types of collections we kept at the library and the types we chose to move and why; the number of serial items without barcodes that were previously unlinked in our catalog (Ex Libris’ Alma); how many items we sold/donated and to whom; and more. We are excited to share what we learned and offer advice to other libraries who are planning their own weeding, inventory, and offsite moving projects.
