Evaluating individual resources is an important process when considering potential acquisitions or cancellations, and for comparing similar resources.

In addition to assessing individual resources, there are many reasons to assess, evaluate, and audit collections as a whole. The types of data collected, methods employed, and frequency of review are informed by the purpose of the assessment project. Examples of reasons to conduct an assessment include determining how effectively the collection meets the needs of its patrons, identifying duplicate or rare resources, creating benchmarks, establishing peer institutions, identifying and addressing content gaps, and weeding.

For the purposes of this section, the terms “assessment,” “evaluation,” “audit,” and “review” will be used interchangeably.

Library Mission and Purpose of Assessment

A library’s collection should directly support the library’s mission, just as the library directly supports its institution’s mission. Ultimately, the majority of resource and collection assessment activities will be conducted to evaluate how well the resource and/or collection is meeting patrons’ needs and aligning with the missions of its library and institution.

Resource Assessment

This section will cover how to evaluate specific types of resources. To evaluate the collection as a whole or a subsection of a collection, see the Collection Assessment section of this chapter.

Books and Ebooks (Monographs)

Assessing monographs requires decisions about which ones best meet your library’s needs. Considerations might include print versus electronic versions, staying up-to-date with the most recent edition, institutional authorship/editorship, local considerations such as curricular use or purchase requests, core publications in every specialty covered by your hospital, or if the perspective/content reflects the diverse perspective of your user communities.

When considering whether to invest in a new monograph or update an old edition, selectors may want to consider the publishing history – primarily the number of previous editions – and how often new editions are released. If a text has multiple previous editions, this may indicate that the audience has found the content valuable enough to encourage publishers to update and release new editions. Newer texts without a history of past editions may require closer scrutiny. You may also want to evaluate getting both a print and electronic version of the same text. Common reasons for this are to accommodate accessibilities/disabilities. Additionally, if your library is a Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) resource library for your state, maintaining a print volume of record may be important.

Below are several sources you can use to assess monographs before purchase. Select the ones that make the most sense for your needs.

• Doody’s Core Titles – A subscription-based collection development tool produced annually that highlights and reviews health sciences book titles recommended by content experts and librarians. Doody’s Core Titles was founded in 2004, following the discontinuation of the Brandon/Hill lists.
  • Doody’s Special Topics Lists are title lists on specific topic subjects (e.g., health equity, rural health, health insurance and the cost of health care) compiled by librarian and disciplinary experts. This is complementary to the existing Doody’s Review Service and Doody’s Core Titles lists that occur annually. The full title lists are available via a subscription to Doody’s, and can also be accessed through other acquisition platforms (e.g., GOBI, R2, EBSCO Ebooks).
  • On the Doody’s website you may see a BH symbol in a book’s record or read references to the Brandon/Hill Lists. These were lists of core titles in medicine, nursing, and allied health that formed the basis of clinical libraries. The lists were discontinued in 2004 but their legacy continues as the foundation of Doody’s Core Titles.
• Recommended bibliographies from professional organizations, such as:
  • Dentistry
    • MLA’s Dental Caucus publishes recommended resources for clinical dentistry (2022) and dental hygiene (2022).
  • Pharmacy
    • The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy publishes a list of basic resources for pharmacy education (2023).
• Search WorldCat for peer or local institutions’ holdings, or consider a tool like OCLC’s WorldShare Collection Evaluation
  • Note that WorldCat holdings may not always be up-to-date.
• COUNTER’s standardized usage reports for ebooks, which can provide information on the usage of past editions, as well as turnaway data for past and current editions. COUNTER tutorials are available through their website.
  • These are usually provided by the vendor through their administrative portal.
  • Note that even though COUNTER reports are standardized, data field definitions can still vary across different vendor platforms.
• Circulation reports, pulled from the library’s Integrated Library System (ILS), for previous editions in print
• Interlibrary loan (ILL) statistics
• Accreditation guidelines
• Faculty recommendations
• External LibGuide book lists
• Look at the lists of contributing authors through publisher websites or websites like Amazon

Some ebook titles may also be available through multiple vendors and platforms. In these situations, it may be helpful to conduct platform assessments in addition to evaluating the title’s contents when making your purchasing decision.

Some Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA) programs allow librarians to decide whether an ebook that has been accessed a certain number of times should be purchased. See the User-Driven Acquisitions (UDA) section for more information about PDA programs.

Journals

Evaluating journal subscriptions can be done on a title-by-title basis or for an entire bundle or package of journals (i.e., “Big Deals”). For many subscription packages, journals may be bundled together, and removing select titles may not be possible. Ideally, journals and journal bundles should be assessed regularly, prior to renewal, to ensure that the subscription is still valuable to library patrons.

Below are resources you can use to assess journal subscriptions. Select the ones that make the most sense for your needs.

• COUNTER’s standardized usage reports for electronic journals. COUNTER tutorials are available through their website.
  • These are usually provided by the vendor through their administrative portal or the data may be available through SUSHI.
  • Note that even though COUNTER reports are standardized, data field definitions can still vary across different vendor platforms.
• Non-COUNTER-compliant usage reports for electronic journals
  • A vendor may provide you with their own usage reports that are not COUNTER-compliant. If this is the case, you will need to review their data field definitions closely since they may differ significantly from COUNTER definitions.
  • Circulation reports, pulled from the library’s ILS, for circulating print journal volumes
• ILL statistics
  • Weigh the cost of ILL, document delivery, and/or pay-per-view against subscription costs.
• Cost per use (CPU) for electronic journals
  • To calculate CPU, utilize:
    • COUNTER reports to determine frequency of use
    • Invoices for past subscription prices
  • Note that low CPU tends to favor cheaper journals, since it doesn’t take as much use to get a low CPU when a journal is low cost.
  • Expensive titles tend to have higher usage (although this isn’t always the case) because they are usually the “premium” or “gold standard” titles. It may be worth separately considering the CPU threshold you are willing to accept for pricier titles.
  • Even if a title’s CPU is a bit high, it might be worth keeping if its usage is extremely strong.
• Bibliometrics, such as:
  • H-factor, Eigenfactor, Impact Factor, or similar metrics
  • Institutional publication rates (such as authorship and citation rates)
• Institutional representation on the editorial board(s)
• Recommendation lists from professional organizations, such as the ones below. Some of the resources listed below are dated, but may still be helpful.
  • Dentistry
    • The Dental Caucus publishes recommended resources for clinical dentistry (2022) and dental hygiene (2022).
  • Health Administration
    • The Public Health/Health Administration Caucus publishes a journal list for health services administration (2012).
  • Nursing
    • The Nursing and Allied Health Resources and Services Caucus has a selected list of nursing journals (2016).
    • “Mapping the literature of pediatric nursing” by Watwood (2016). PMCID: PMC5079488
  • Occupational Therapy
    • “Mapping the literature of occupational therapy: An update” by Potter (2010). PMCID: PMC2901014
  • Pharmacy
    • The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy publishes a core pharmacy journals title list (2022).
  • Physical Therapy
    • “Mapping the core journals of the physical therapy literature” by Wells et al. (2011). PMCID: PMC3133899
  • Public Health
    • The Public Health/Health Administration Caucus publishes journal lists for biostatistics (2011), epidemiology (2011), health behavior and education (2011), public health journals (date unknown, file was uploaded in 2015).
  • Vision Science
    • The Association of Vision Science Librarians’ website includes a vetted list of vision science journals.
• Search library websites to see if your peers subscribe to specific journal titles. You may also consider looking on their LibGuides, reaching out to them directly to see if they subscribe to certain packages, or consider using a tool like OCLC’s WorldShare Collection Evaluation. You can also ask your vendor directly.
• Tools like CelusOne and Unsub can aid in visualizing and aggregating journal usage over time.
  • Unsub is typically used to analyze Big Deals with certain vendors and evaluate cancellation options. See the Big Deals section for more information.
• Feedback from your user group
  • Feedback from your user group can provide useful context on how resources are or will be used, which can be difficult to determine from quantitative usage statistics or turnaway data. It is especially important to consider obtaining feedback when conducting a journal cancellation project.

Below are other factors to consider when assessing journal titles.

• Do you have perpetual access to a journal’s content and/or its backfiles?
• Is the title essential to a small department? Smaller departments may generate comparatively lower usage, but some of the titles in their subject areas may be worth keeping if they are critical for their work.
• Does the title support a need and/or gap in your institution’s research as it relates to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA)?
• How are the needs at your institution changing? Which titles would support burgeoning areas of research at your institution?
• Does the journal participate in CLOCKSS?
• Does your library participate in LOCKSS?

Databases

Electronic databases come in all shapes and sizes – from subject-based, full-text offerings to streaming media collections. How you evaluate a database greatly depends on its contents. Like journals, access to databases tend to be subscription-based and should be regularly assessed to make sure that the content is still being utilized. Database content can also be added and removed regularly by the publisher/vendor, so it is important to review content changes when they are released to determine if the changes significantly affect the usefulness of the database for library patrons.

Content (including streaming media)

Below are some items to consider when reviewing the contents of a database:

• Is this resource appropriate for the library’s audiences?
• Is the content unique? Does the resource fill a gap in the collection? Does it provide a missing perspective or voice?
• What is the blend of must-have content versus content that is less useful (or doesn’t meet your collection guidelines)?
• How do you access the databases (e.g., IP authentication, single sign on [SSO], username/password)?
  • For an overview of common authentication and authorization mechanisms used in academic libraries, see Carter and Hanson’s white paper and webinar recording (2022).
  • Is the content available through ILL?
  • Determine frequency of use and CPU over time to help with renewal decisions.

Platform

See the Assessing Platforms section in this chapter for additional items to consider beyond the content itself. When assessing a database you will always review the content and the platform together. For example, you could have excellent content but the platform features and functionality make it not user-friendly.

Sources of Database Reviews

There are several key resources that publish database reviews:

• Doody’s Review Service
• Charleston Advisor
• Journal of the Medical Libraries Association
• Medical Reference Services Quarterly

You can also try emailing Medical Libraries Association caucus lists to get feedback on a potential database acquisition from peer librarians.

Other Resources

You may need to assess other types of resources as well, such as citation management tools, systematic review production tools, etc. During your evaluation process, you should consider the following:

• Who is the audience for this resource? Is there currently a demand for this type of resource within that community?
• Is this resource accessible to a wide variety of audiences (i.e., Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG-compliant)?
• Does this resource fill a gap at your institution? Does it fill a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA)-related need?
• Is it appropriate for the library to pay for this resource as opposed to another unit at your institution?
• How much administrative upkeep does it require from year-to-year?

See the Assessing Platforms section in this chapter for additional items to consider.

Collection Assessment

Beyond assessing individual resources, librarians also need to assess subsections of the collection or the collection as a whole in order to identify trends and patterns. These holistic evaluations can provide a big picture view of the direction your collection has been taking and insights into opportunities for large-scale change or improvement.

Sources for Assessing Collections Content

The assessment method(s) employed for a collection assessment will depend upon the purpose of the project. Examples of common types of assessments and the data typically collected to conduct those assessments include:

• Subject coverage
  • Inventory list(s) pulled from the ILS (Integrated Library System)
  • Interlibrary Loan (ILL) statistics
  • For books: authoritative subject guides from professional organizations, accreditation guidelines, examination study guides, course syllabi, Doody’s Core Titles, or similar
  • For journals: Journal Citation Reports (JCR), Dimensions, Scopus, or a similar cross-disciplinary database that specializes in citation data
• Peer benchmarking/comparisons with other libraries
  • Inventory list(s) pulled from peer library catalog(s), OCLC tools such as Worldshare Collection Evaluation or similar. These bring together several types of collections data in one spreadsheet (e.g., ILS-based data, call number, local holdings, holdings at peer libraries/nationally, check out data)
• Needs assessment/Meeting patrons’ needs and/or expectations:
  • Patron feedback through surveys, focus groups, curricula committee meetings, institutional reports, or similar
  • Recommendations from subject liaison librarians
  • ILL statistics
  • For books: authoritative subject guides from professional organizations, accreditation guidelines, examination study guides, course syllabi, Doody’s Core Titles, or similar
  • For journals: JCR, Dimensions, Scopus, or a similar cross-disciplinary database that specializes in citation data
• Cancellation decisions for electronic resources
  • COUNTER reports
  • Invoices for past subscription prices and price quotes for anticipated price increases
  • Patron feedback through surveys, focus groups, curricula committee meetings, institutional reports, or similar
  • Bibliometrics, such as impact factors and the institution’s publication rates (institutional authorship and citation rates)
• Core collection lists
  • Inventory list(s) pulled from the ILS
  • For books: authoritative subject guides from professional organizations (see book assessment sources), accreditation guidelines, examination study guides, course syllabi, ACRL’s Resources for College Libraries, Doody’s Core Titles, or similar
  • For journals: JCR, Dimensions, Scopus, or a similar cross-disciplinary database that specializes in citation data, and recommendation lists from professional organizations (see journal assessment sources)

Frequency of Assessment

How often a collection should be assessed depends on the needs of the library; the amount of time, energy, and staff available to devote to the project; and the intended scope. One of the factors related to assessment frequency is whether there have been changes at the institution that the library supports. Changes could include new patron groups (e.g., new academic programs or hospital specialties), modifications to curricula or accreditation guidelines, adjustment of library or institutional goals, and changes to collection budgets.

Diversity Audits

A diversity audit involves inventorying a library collection to understand its coverage of historically underrepresented populations, voices, and experiences. It is typically completed to identify and rectify a collection’s gaps in order to make it more inclusive. Some common approaches include conducting a diversity audit on an entire library collection or a random sampling of it; checking a collection against award/recommendation lists (i.e., list checking); or conducting an audit on a well-defined section of the collection (Voels, 2022). Book order audits, in which a title is assessed during the ordering process, may also be used to supplement a diversity audit of the collection (Jensen, 2017).

Diversity audits are a more common practice in public and school libraries, although academic and health sciences libraries have completed versions of them to improve their collections as well. Below are some considerations for health sciences libraries to think about when considering a diversity audit.

• Which Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity, and Accessibility (DEIA) subjects will you assess?
  • Which stakeholders should be defining this criteria with you (e.g., liaison librarians, faculty, community members)?
  • Consider whether to include topics such as rural health, homelessness, incarceration, and other topics that may impact health.
• What will you use to determine whether a book matches your criteria (e.g., subject headings)?
• Does it make sense to spend time assessing older materials (which may contain outdated health information) or should your audit focus on evaluating newer content?
• Does it make sense to take into consideration an author’s identity/lived experience for your audit? If so, how will you identify whether an author fits a particular category while also being respectful of their privacy?
• Which formats make the most sense to evaluate?
• How much time do you and your staff have to conduct an evaluation? Make sure to scope your project accordingly.
• When your evaluation is complete, how do your community’s demographics compare to what’s covered in your collection?
• Can you conduct a book order audit in tandem with a larger project, to make sure that your evaluation stays up to date?
• How will you address your audit’s findings?
• How do you plan to ensure that your diversity audit is not a one-off project? How will the findings influence future collection development?

Doody’s Special Topics Lists are title lists on specific topic subjects (e.g., health equity, rural health, health insurance and the cost of health care) compiled by librarian and disciplinary experts. This is complementary to the existing Doody’s Review Service and Doody’s Core Titles lists that occur annually. The full title lists are available via a subscription to Doody’s, and can also be accessed through other acquisition platforms (e.g., GOBI, R2, EBSCO Ebooks).

OCLC has a short video about how to use GreenGlass as a tool for DEIA analysis.

The Medical Library Association’s Collection Development Caucus also publishes a publicly available list of collections-related Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) projects and resources, available through their website. (Scroll down to the Public Resources section for a link to the Google Doc.) The list includes some diversity audit projects.

Assessing Platforms

All electronic resources are hosted on an interface or platform where the patron can view and interact with the resource. In addition to evaluating the content that is hosted on these platforms, assessing the platform itself is very important, especially when considering whether to acquire a new resource, when comparing similar resources, or after major platform upgrades have taken place.

Considerations for platform evaluation include:

• Access
  • Does the resource work with the library’s existing modalities of access, such as its proxy server (e.g., EZProxy), SSO, or link resolver (e.g., SFX)?
  • Does the resource appear in the list of resources included in the discovery layer for the institution (e.g., Summon, Alma)?
  • Mobile app availability
•  Accessibility
  • Are there any Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility concerns? Will the company share up-to-date Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)  documents with you in advance and send you revised VPAT documents over time? What is their response to improving the platform to meet accessibility requirements?
  • The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) has a Library Accessibility toolkit that covers the latest guidance in assessing collection material accessibility and includes ideal license language. They have publicly published accessibility evaluations and vendor responses for many electronic resources in health sciences and other disciplines.
•  Cost
  • Is there a discount for a multi-year contract?
  • If content is available on multiple platforms, which platform is most cost effective? Are there sacrifices in platform quality when paying a lower price?
  • Does the vendor offer a free trial that lasts long enough for all interested parties to evaluate the resource?
  • Is there another department at the institution that should manage the resource instead? For instance, if the resource is predominantly or solely for the use of one particular group, perhaps that group should purchase or manage it directly.
• Setup and maintenance
  • What will the resource setup entail?
  • What metadata and/or MARC records are available from the vendor/publisher?
  • Mobile app requirements
• User experience
  • Is the design intuitive or frustrating?
  • Will the resource be easy to use or easy to teach?
  • Does it include functionality that your users might want, such as downloadable PDFs, saving searches and results, stable/durable URLs, and exporting images?

General Tips for New Resource Assessment

Have a process/procedure in place for evaluating new resources that makes clear:

• All tasks for evaluating the new resource.
• Who will carry out a given task (e.g., internal staff, external stakeholders)?
• Deadline(s) for evaluation and acquisition decision.
• Evaluation criteria that addresses your library’s acquisition requirements and needs such as making sure the resource works well with your existing systems (e.g., EZproxy, discovery layer) and if the vendor provides reliable MARC records.
• Evaluation modality (e.g., email messages, online polls).
• Archiving of the written evaluations/poll results.

Weeding, Deaccessioning, and Canceling Resources

Weeding is also referred to as deaccessioning or deselection. Broadly speaking, the terms can be used interchangeably. Weeding and deselection tend to refer to the weeding process of physical materials. Deaccessioning often refers to the removal of electronic resources from a collection. Deaccessioning is also the term frequently used in integrated library systems (ILS) to refer to the process of removing records from the library catalog.

The Big Picture

Weeding a library collection is an enormous undertaking, often involving several staff members from several departments. A few libraries have weeding workflows that continually cull all or parts of their collection. Most libraries do not weed unless there is a specific need to do so. Budget cuts, space constraints such as downsizing, off-site storage plans, and changing collection goals can all play a part in a decision to develop a weeding plan.

After 20+ years of collecting electronic resources, libraries are now turning an eye to weeding their digital collections too. These suggested best practices will address separately the deselection of print and digital resources even though there is overlap between the two.

The Weeding Plan

Whatever scenario you find your library in, a weeding plan should begin with the library’s mission statement, collection development goals, and collection development policies. All three will provide a framework for your weeding plan. See below for examples of how this might work in practice.

• A hospital library’s mission is to provide the most current resources available to support clinical care. Its collection development policy is to keep only the most current edition plus one previous edition of English language core materials. High priority is given to Doody’s Core titles.
• An academic medical school library’s mission is to support academic and clinical research, and up-to-date clinical care, with an emphasis on digital resources over print. To support in-depth academic research, they keep all previous editions of materials relating to core research areas of the institution. No foreign language materials are actively collected.
• A community college’s mission is to support the academic goals of their institution. The health sciences collection is one component of a central collection and high priority may be given to texts required by their health sciences programs. Maintaining a current collection of high-demand materials is a larger priority than retaining a retrospective or historical collection.

Weeding plans can vary in scope from your entire collection to a smaller subject area (e.g., nursing), and should be developed with staffing and time constraints in mind. Weeding criteria may vary for various subject areas and should be communicated clearly and consistently, especially when working as a team. Individual interpretations of ambiguous guidelines can lead to inconsistent results when several subject specialists are evaluating their areas.

Weeding Physical Items

Common withdrawal criteria for physical items include:

• Outdated titles, if having the most current content is essential
  • Consider whether a title might be one of very few to address a topic or is from an underrepresented voice in your collection (e.g., Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility), in which case you may want to keep it.
• Duplicate copies
  • Duplicate copies can be useful when a title is popular, but over time, they may no longer be needed.
  • For titles where the library owns both the print and electronic versions, consider whether the print is necessary.
• Print journal volumes/year ranges that overlap online holdings
  • If offsite storage is available, print journal runs are often sent there instead of being withdrawn from the collection.
• Out-of-scope titles according to your current collection policies and institutional needs
• Materials with low usage statistics.
  • Items that were non-circulating at some point (e.g., reference, course reserves) or were requested through ILL may not have usage data that accurately reflects past usage.
  • Low usage stats, especially for print materials, may obscure the benefits of retaining a resource by or about historically marginalized communities or authors since these authors do not reflect the majority voice or perspective.
• Copies available at other local, affiliated, or consortia libraries, or through shared print repositories and retention programs.
• Damaged, lost, or missing print items that you are not going to replace
• Obsolete or unsupported formats (e.g., Beta tapes, cassette tapes, etc.)
• Non-functioning or outdated teaching tools

Weeding Electronic Items: Deaccessioning and/or Canceling Resources

Weeding electronic resources can mean several things in practice. For items that are owned with perpetual access rights but are old, inaccurate, or have very low usage, deaccessioning the item record (sometimes called suppressing or deleting the item record) will remove the items from public view and/or your collection. For items or resources that require a subscription, cancellation of the resource will remove it from your collection.

The criteria used for weeding print materials also apply to electronic resources, but there are some additional considerations for electronic resources, as listed below.

• Usage reports for electronic resources (whether COUNTER-compliant or not) need to be obtained from your vendor’s administrative portal or directly requested.
• If an electronic resource does not have post-cancellation rights, then all digital holdings for a journal/book will disappear. Keeping print holdings for this content may be a priority in this type of situation.
• Do your technical services staff have the time and resources to weed your digital collection?

Collection Analytics for Weeding Projects

The same resources you use to assess whether to purchase items can be used to determine if you should weed them. One common collections data analytics tool used for weeding large collections is OCLC’s Greenglass, which focuses on print resources held by a library. To use this tool, the library must also have its holdings in OCLC. OCLC has a short video about how to use GreenGlass as a tool for DEIA analysis.

Gold Rush is a less expensive but more limited tool that you can also use to compare library collections.

Disposal of Weeded Materials

There is no single solution on how to dispose of deaccessioned print materials. Institutional guidelines and policies should dictate what can be done with weeded print items. Some institutions have restrictions on the sale of property; others will let a library have a book sale or donate materials elsewhere. One question that can come up is whether institutions in other countries might be interested in weeded materials. The answer is usually “no” because the materials being removed are outdated or damaged in some way.

Communication and Outreach

Libraries should be mindful of patron responses to weeding and plan accordingly with their administration. This includes both electronic and print material cancellations and weeding. Decide early on how public the weeding process will be and what communications will occur. Gathering feedback from users regarding what materials to weed can be helpful and allow for a more collaborative approach to weeding the collection. Talking to other librarians who have engaged in similar weeding projects can help identify areas of concern and strategies for success.

If you are conducting a major electronic journal cancellation project, the University of California’s “Communications planning and execution” section of their publisher negotiation toolkit offers helpful considerations for crafting an effective communication strategy.

Review the section on Communication and Outreach Considerations for Collection Development for additional communication considerations.

Online Courses for Professional Development

• American Library Association CORE: Fundamentals of Collection Assessment.

References and Further Reading

Bowers, M., Allison, T., & Faltinek, A. (2020). Into the weeds: High-volume weeding at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Technical Services Quarterly, 37(2), 120-127.

Brennan, D. (2015). Collection assessment and the library liaison program: A practical focus. Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice, 3(1), 41-52. https://doi.org/10.5195/palrap.2015.88

Brillant, B., Guessferd, M. R., Snieg, A. L., Jones, J. J., Keeler, T., & Stephenson, P. L. (2022). Assessing diversity in hospital library collections. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 41(4), 424–438. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2022.2131185

Broadbent, D., Goates, M. C., Frost, M., Nelson, G. M., & Pixton, D. S. (2022). In their own words: Perspectives on collection weeding from library employees and teaching faculty. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(4), 102563.

Carmack, N., 2021. Collecting for diversity, equity, and inclusion: Best practices for Virginia libraries. Virginia Libraries, 65(1), 5. http://doi.org/10.21061/valib.v65i1.622

Clark, B., & Smith, C. (2022). Prioritizing the people: Developing a method for evaluating a collection’s description of diverse populations. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 1-23.

Cronk, L. & Creech, A. (2022). Getting started with resource review. In G. Chilton (Ed.), Managing licensed e-resources: Techniques, tips, and practical advice (pp. 169-188). Pacific University Press. https://doi.org/10.7710/pup.945398.2022-001

Delgado, J. (2021). Weeding into outreach: A case study using an urban community college’s reserve collection. Urban Library Journal, 26(2), 2. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ulj/vol26/iss2/2/

Gordon Conyers, D. (2019). Rethinking print periodicals holdings retention policy in small academic libraries. Serials Review, 45(1-2), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00987913.2019.1610143

Jahnke, L. M., Tanaka, K., & Palazzolo, C. A. (2022). Ideology, policy, and practice: Structural barriers to collections diversity in research and college libraries. College & Research Libraries, 83(2), 166.

Jensen, K. (2017, November 2). Doing a YA collection diversity audit: The how to (Part 2). School Library Journal. https://teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2017/11/02/doing-a-ya-collection-diversity-audit-part-2/

Kelly, M. (2021). The complete collection assessment manual: A holistic approach. American Library Association.

Kendall, S. K. (Ed.). (2018). Health sciences collection management for the twenty-first century. Rowman & Littlefield.

This book covers user-oriented collection assessment (Chapter 4), resource usability and accessibility (Chapter 7), points to consider when collecting data (Chapter 8), and case studies on weeding (Chapter 2) and walking away from a resource (Chapter 4).

Kristick, L. (2020). Diversity literary awards: A tool for assessing an academic library’s collection. Collection Management, 45(2), 151-161. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2019.1675209

Library Accessibility – Introduction. (n.d.) Big Ten Academic Alliance. Retrieved July 29, 2022, from https://btaa.org/library/reports

Johnson, P. (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management. American Library Association.

Chapter 8 is on “Collection analysis, accountability, and demonstrating value.”

Voels, S. (2022). Auditing diversity in library collections. ABC-CLIO.

This book is geared towards auditing public and school library collections but may offer some helpful context for how diversity audits are typically conducted.