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The Problem of SpaceWhat shall we do with a book collection that has grown too large to store entirely on open stacks? We tend to think of this as a recent problem, yet as long ago as 1902, Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard University, advocated separating books on the basis of usage and transferring to storage those that were little used: "It might naturally be suspected that a book which had not been called for in a university library for twenty years possessed but a faint vitality; whereas a book that was called for every year would certainly be considered alive" (see the bibliography, no. 7, p. 52).Since President Eliot's time, the problem has not only remained acute, it has become increasingly-if not exponentially-worse.1 Librarians need no persuasion that space problems are critical. At the Music Library of the University of California at Berkeley, we found in the fall of 1977 that our bound-periodical stacks were 92.94 percent full, our reference stacks were 98.61 percent full, and our book stacks were 98.69 percent full.In order to solve the space problem, one might consider these alternatives: build a new library; build an addition to the present library; add compact storage; select (on some reasonable basis) a significant number of books for remote storage; select (again on a reasonable basis) books for discarding; or replace books with microforms.2The first two alternatives-however desirable-are too costly and too remote to solve the crisis soon enough. Compact storage is unsatisfactory in a browsing collection. And replacing books with microforms is not yet acceptable. Thus, weeding-selecting books both for storage and for discarding-seems to be the most reasonable ongoing solution Ann Basart is a reference librarian in the Music Library at the University of California, Berkeley.-Ed. IThe most persuasive recent argument for weeding is the collection of essays entitled Farewell to Alexandria, edited by Daniel Gore (no. 11).For a detailed study of all these alternatives, see Schorrig (no. 29). Salmon (no. 27) discusses each alternative in relation to the University of California system.