Retention Model Summaries

2013 Retention Model

MSCS committed to retain holdings/items of titles published pre-2003, if any of the following criteria were met:

  • —Any circulation, internal, or reserve use
  • —Specific edition has less than 10 holdings in the U.S. (according to OCLC)
  • —“local interest” title-sets

Copies retained across MSCS

Criteria Number of copies retained
1-3 uses 1 copy
4+ uses 2 copies
“Local Interest” titles (regardless of use) 2 copies
“Rare” in OCLC (under 10 holdings) At least one copy at each holding library
Copy held in Special Collections Any copy in Special Collections locations plus 1 circulating copy (if applicable)

Retention allocation

1 If Colby College holds a title, titles were marked committed to retain.

2 If a title was held by any of the Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin college libraries then at least one of these libraries had their holding marked committed to retain. If Colby held and was marked committed to retain per rule 1 then this rule was satisfied.

3 Given that rules 1 and 2 are satisfied, the remaining retention allocations were done in an “equitable” fashion, where every library committed to retain a percentage of titles proportional to their collection size.

4 ALL Maine State Library’s “local interest” title-holdings were marked committed to retain.

2019 Retention Models

Based on the experiences of the original 2013 model MSCC decided to have two separate retention models for titles published between 2003-2012, one for the participating academic libraries and another for the participating public libraries. Note, the Maine State Library was included in the academic model. Also, participating academic libraries in the Minerva consortium were included in the public model for ease of implementation.

Academic Libraries Model

  • —Rarity
    • Retain ALL copies of titles where fewer than 10 U.S. holding in OCLC WorldCat (Any edition)
  • Usage
    • Retain 2 copies of titles with 8 or more aggregate uses held by multiple libraries in group (Any edition)
    • Retain 1 copy of titles with 4 or more aggregate uses held by only 1 library (Any edition)

Not retaining:

    • —titles with 1-3 aggregate uses;
    • —titles held by multiple libraries & fewer than 8 aggregate uses;
    • —anything in the MSCC “ephemera” category;
    • —titles with existing MSCC commitments.

Public Libraries Model

  • —Rarity
    • Retain ALL copies of titles where fewer than 10 U.S. holding in OCLC WorldCat (Any edition)
  • Usage
    • —Retain 1 copy of titles with 10 or more aggregate uses held by 1 or more libraries, with a last charge date after 2014 (Any edition)

Not retaining:

  • —titles with 1-9 aggregate uses;
  • ——titles with 10 or more uses pre-2014;
  • —anything in the MSCC “ephemera” category;
  • —titles with existing MSCC commitments.

Retention allocation

1. If a title was held by any either Colby or Bowdoin college libraries then at least one of these libraries had their holding marked committed to retain.

2. Given that rule 1 was satisfied, the remaining retention allocations were done in an “equitable” fashion, where every library committed to retain a percentage of titles proportional to their collection size.