Withdrawal Policies and Procedures for Library Materials (Item in Hand)

To: Technical Services Staff
From: Joan Swanekamp
Date: (12/7/1994 creation date/ October 19, 2007 3:09 PM revision date)


This document establishes the policies and procedures to be followed regarding the withdrawal of library materials when the item is in hand, including materials acquired for staff use only. This document does NOT address the policies and procedures associated with the decision itself to withdraw materials.

These policies and procedures apply only to materials that have been fully accessioned and cataloged and require marking in order to be officially de-accessioned. These procedures do not apply to newspapers where the print issues are retained until the microfilm version has been accessioned, or to replaced pages of updating loose-leafs. For uncataloged gifts & exchanges, or errors that need to be deleted, suppressed, etc. for various reasons, refer to Section 2, items C.-F. of:

Policies for Suppression, Deletion, and Re-Use of Orbis Records.

For government depository program documents, refer to the Appendix at the end of this document.

For the withdrawal policies and procedures for missing and unreturned library materials (i.e., where the item to be withdrawn is not available for marking), refer to:

Withdrawal Policies and Procedures for Missing and Unreturned Library Materials (Item Not in Hand)

Note that the policies and procedures in this document do not apply to YUL virtual holdings of remote electronic resources, whether owned or licensed.

Consistently applied procedures are imperative; the Library must ensure that all withdrawn materials are clearly marked as such, so that there can be no question whether they had once been part of the Library collections. Library security personnel, upon inspection of material, must be able to distinguish legitimately withdrawn items, and procedures must be comprehensive enough that illegitimate attempts to mark items as withdrawn will be discovered. To this end, all withdrawn materials must demonstrate consistent and extensive markings to indicate that an item has been withdrawn and is no longer the property of the Yale University Library.

The procedures assume that a book, serial issue, or bound volume is being withdrawn. Other formats, such as direct access computer files (e.g. CD-ROMs), microform, scores, maps, etc. may also be withdrawn and, in such cases, all appropriate withdrawal steps must be followed in keeping with the principles stated in section 1.2.

The vast majority of withdrawn library materials will be marked according to the procedures outlined in section 2.1. If materials are rare or have significant re-sale value, units may follow the marking procedures outlined in section 2.2. Catalog maintenance for all materials withdrawn must be handled according to the procedures specified in section 3.0. Disposal of withdrawn materials is addressed in section 4.0.