The weeding project that we've started this year involves identifying
unneeded added copies and outdated editions only. Rather than have the
professional librarians examine every book on every shelf, I've suggested we
prepare some lists that students can pull - where there has been less than x
uses in the past y years and there are more than one copies. We haven't
historically provided copy numbers on our records, so we can't tell if two
item records are for the same entity, but I think student workers could
probably handle checking for that.  The next category of thing - superceded
editions - is more difficult to check for - they may have the same call
number with a different date on the call number, etc.  Has anyone done any
work to match author/title and identify the series of editions based on
that?  Or any other automation that would help with this weeding project.
Our collection managers are skeptical that it can be automated in any way.

Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian
Colgate University Libraries
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