Discard or Keep

It was intriguing to find that U.S. Academic libraries rarely sell books. Instead they construct huge remote storages that are temperature controlled to keep their print collections. Collections  kept on a remote storage is accessible to scholars on demand. Technology has enabled these collection to be transported by  robot driven cranes from underground storage to the circulation desk. In some cases the period between the request and availability a collection takes as little as 15minutes. Another myth has been that U.S. academic libraries only keep electronic material. But the evidence from different institutions including the State University of Chicago is that huge print collection are stored in underground storage and easilly accessible to Researchers and Scholars. South African Academic needs to learn from these lessons and start building storage collaboratively or by region.