When the rubber meets the road,

Pt. 2 -- Welch Library’s experience

Sue M. Woodson, MLIS, PhDWelch Medical LibraryJohns Hopkins MedicineCharleston ConferenceNovember 5, 2010

Shrink the Welch print collection

• Shrink print holdings by about 80%

• Do this by 2012

Improving Our Service to Hopkins Medical Community

Welch Medical Library

The context

• .

2000

New Director:

Major User Needs Study

GOALS

1. All collections online

2. Services embedded in depts

3. Excellent discovery tools

Take the library to the patron

“that's where the money is”

Bank robber:

Willie Sutton

US gov DOJ image

Wm H. Welch Medical Library

Changes in staffing

Jobs going away

• Cataloging and Acquisitions• Shelving• In person reference• Security Guards

New work

• Off- hours phone reference• Aiding systematic reviews• Publicity

Job re-alignment

• Fill job vacancies from within the library where possible

Welch – it’s not your father’s library

• We collect for today• If we don’t have it buy it or ILL it• If our users no longer use it, we don’t buy it

The Welch collection is becoming a service to our

current community.

We are no longer an institution of cultural memory.

GOING FORWARD

SE/A – Print Retention Task Force

National Network | Libraries of Medicine

• How long do we need to keep *some* print copies of our journal literature?

• How many copies need to be kept?

• How to coordinate distributed presevation?

• What becomes of print when it is no longer valuable to Medicine?

Welch Medical Library

…Wherever you are