Organization Monkey

we’re weeding the collection here at the library, withdrawing lots of old books.  this is great because we keep buying new books.  soon the shelves will be full and we will begin this process anew.  this is the delicate balancing act of collection management.  you don’t want to withdraw something still relevant even if it’s old, so each book is considered.  this process takes time.  but that’s not why i’m writing this post.

once we decide to withdraw the book we delete our holdings in oclc so that people won’t ask to borrow the book we’ve just tossed away.  this process used to involve opening each record and clicking on “delete holdings,” but no longer.  now we batch delete our holdings.  i feed a text file into oclc and it runs the process in the background and takes under a minute, depending on how many lines are in the file.

if you haven’t used this feature yet, give it a try the next time you have a whole bunch of books to withdraw.  here are my notes on how to do it:

1. Create a text file in Notepad of the OCLC numbers you wish to withdraw.  Put each OCLC number on its own line, like the numbers listed below these instructions.
2. Save as a .txt file on your desktop.
3. Open OCLC.  In the top menu, choose “Batch”,”Holdings by OCLC Number.” Import the file that is saved
on your desktop.  Click “Delete Holdings.”

That’s it!

46315858
48472285
50852813
21247479
21247438
21245527