Maine Shared Collections Cooperative (MSCC) retention commitments made to date represent a good faith cooperative effort, in which members can trust one another to keep the majority of commitments made. In some cases, however, due to the scale of the MSCS project parameters, lack of shelf and condition status verification at time of commitment, and incidental damage and loss, some retention commitments may need to be changed when the item that originally received the commitment is removed under a library’s existing collection development policies and procedures.

Retention commitment changes will generally fall into two categories, transfer of commitment or removal of commitment.

1. Transfer of commitment (either internal or external). Libraries will maintain retention commitments when possible, by transferring them when the original item is no longer available. Transfer could be to:
   1. newer edition of the title
   2. equivalent copy of the text
   3. better condition copy of title
   4. another MSCC library’s copy of title

MSCC libraries should follow their own local workflow procedures for transferring commitments to internal copies. For external transfers to another MSCC library staff should follow the MSCC Procedure for the External Transfer of Retention Commitments.

2. Removal of commitment. Libraries will only remove retention commitments on a limited title-by-title basis, not in large batches. MSCC libraries are not required to report on the removal of one-off retention commitments. Removal reasons may include:
   1. replacement copy not available at reasonable cost (local determination of reasonable)
   2. replacement copy would have same problem as original (e.g. brittle paper)
   3. replacement copy would not be purchased under the library’s collection policy (e.g. library would not replace a textbook; gift; older edition where newer edition is available)
   4. title not in keeping with library collection policy (e.g. outdated health, legal, consumer information)
   5. title is one of multiple imprints of the same title that have no distinguishing features such as scholarly essays, editor, translator, special bindings, important marginalia, Maine imprint – and library will still retain one or more commitments to the title
   6. title is out of scope for MSCC (e.g. government and legal documents)

Documentation for adding and removing retention statements in catalogs can be found here.