There are currently rows upon rows of books in Collier Library with yellow tags protruding from them.

The yellow tags identify books that will be gradually removed from the library to make room for new books, said Amy Butler, assistant professor and librarian.

“Right now we’re going through a withdrawal project to remove books that are outdated and no longer needed,” Butler said. “We’re running out of room for our news books, and we don’t really have any room for any new things. We’re pretty much at capacity as far as the shelves go.”

The number of books being removed is the result of a newer approach to replacing books, Butler said.

“The reason we’re doing such a large-scale withdrawal process right now is because we haven’t done a lot of systematic withdrawals in the past,” Butler said. “Part of that is because older library standards had formulas, and it was a lot about quantity more than the quality at times, and a lot of the standards have changed.”

The Collier Library student employees marked the books for replacement, said Kathleen Franks, a senior who works in the library.

“We (marked withdrawal candidates) not this past summer, but the summer before that,” Franks said. “The little slips had call numbers on them, and we would match (the books) with the call numbers and put them in that book. That probably took about six months to a year, I would say.”

There are many criteria for determining which books to remove, Butler said.

“Depending on the subject area, we look at a variety of different things, such as the ages of materials (and the) currency of the information,” Butler said. “We also look at past circulation, but we consider things such as (whether or not) it’s listed in recommended sources such as ‘Books for College Libraries’ or ‘Needed Resources for College Libraries.’ We remove things that are considered poor titles from the list by comparing it to that standard bibliography.”

Books that are retired will still be made useful, Butler said.

“We’re actually working with Better World Books, which is a company that will try first to sell the materials,” Butler said. “If they’re able to sell them, we will get a portion of the profit. They also donate things that they can’t sell or recycle so that hopefully nothing ends up in a landfill.”

Suggestions for new books come from many different areas, Butler said.

“A lot of that is driven by request from faculty members because every academic department does have an allocation from within the library’s budget that they may spend on materials,” Butler said. “They request the materials through us, and we find the best price for those materials. Librarians also select materials from different review sources.”

Removing so many books at one time shouldn’t be a problem, Franks said.

“I think as long as we bring more relevant books back in to balance out (the large withdrawal) it will be a good thing,” Franks said. “If we just got rid of hundreds of books at a time without refurbishing, I don’t think that would be very smart. I think it will be good to get more relevant, up-to-date books on different subjects.”