What do university libraries do to their extremely old books?

For example - books published before the 1950s.

University libraries will continue to purchase more and more books, but there is only so much space that is available in each university libraries. Some libraries (like MIT's) seem to have more modern collections than other libraries (like Brown's) though.

InquilineKea

• academic-libraries
• weeding
• collection-development

Comments

• foggyone: The options you give may also be affected by what is covered. Science and technology heavy collections must update regularly while a collection in the Humanities may be able to hold onto books a bit longer. You do not want your doctor studying from 1800's medical textbooks, but a historian might love to study it.
• Melissa: It's also why a liberal arts college library might have an older collection date than a science library -- literature doesn't expire.

Answer by Wooble

First, early-to-mid 20th Century books are not usually considered "very old"; very old books are usually stored in special collections.

Many libraries (including both Brown and MIT) store older, low-use materials in offsite, high-density storage facilites. Others, without the budget to do so, may choose to discard these books, particularly if they're widely held by other libraries and do not get used often.

Comments

• Kris C: And as an aside, there's the likes of the Bodleian which has a copy of every book copyrighted in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-16325727

Answer by dsalo

Collectively, libraries are investigating their collections for unique and rare items, to be sure that enough copies exist to keep them available. This is known in the field as the "last-copy problem."

You may be interested in the Ithaka report "What to Withdraw?" which asks when the availability and quality of a digitized version of a print item warrants withdrawal of the item from circulating print collections.

Comments

• Melissa: WorldCat comes in handy to check for the "last copy" problem.
• dsalo: True, but I believe it's been found not to suffice; some libraries (even research libraries) aren't members, and some special collections aren't as well-cataloged as they might be.