The GIST Team at the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo College has released a free and innovative open-source tool called the GIST Gift & Deselection Manager (GDM). It is designed to manage and streamline library work-flow for processing gifts and evaluating materials for weeding. GDM will dramatically improve upon a time-consuming activity by: * Automating the gathering of data for evaluating donations including holdings, comparison of editions you hold, full-text, and other data, * Streamlining the work-flow; recommending “keep or do not keep” according to your collection building conspectus file, and if you keep an item, GDM can open and search the work in OCLC Connexion so you may attach holdings and download a record; * Automating donor letters with lists of donated items – no more keying in title information for acknowledgments and the data is now be stored in GDM’s database; * Evaluating data for weeding title by title or batch titles en masse GDM automatically creates a spreadsheet for evaluating tens of thousands of titles (we found that over 13% of our 31K items we evaluated were available full text in the Hathi Trust); GDM also works for evaluating journal titles across consortia. How does GDM work? GDM uses several APIs (application programming interface) to leverage important data about items so you don’t have to manually look them up in various web browser searches. GDM does all the searches when you wand in an ISBN or search by title, and gathers the data you need to the streamline your work-flow and make effective decision making. What GDM data and information are important for gift and deselection evaluation? GDM version 1 includes; * _Holdings informatio_n: your holdings (FRBRized), # of holding libraries in your local, consortia, and/or state, * _Item information_: your ILS item record to compare imprint, Worldcat link to see more about the item, Hathi Trust and Google Books full-text, Better World Books acceptance as library discard, * _Recommendation information_: GDM automatically recommends "Keep" or "Do Not Keep" based on a customizable subject conspectus – and override or recommend review are options too. * _Custom data_: import library enriched book lists to flag you with notes if the item is an award-winner or on some core title lists, Caldecott and Newbery awards are already loaded in the copy you download. *The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) projects focus on optimizing work-flow by leveraging systems to do more work while reducing the staff time necessary to make informed decisions and process materials. * GDM Version 1 has been released today, August 16, 2010. For more information, documentation, and to download, please visit the GIST Toolkit website: http://gist.idsproject.org <http://gettingitsystemtoolkit.wordpress.com/gift-deselection-manager/> GIST Team Tim Bowersox, Cyril Oberlander, Kate Pitcher, Mark Sullivan -- ____________________________________ Mark Sullivan Systems Administrator for the College Libraries 1 College Circle SUNY Geneseo Geneseo, NY 14454 (585) 245-5698